


Scrimshaw

by Twilit



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Blood, Broken Bones, F/F, Torture, Western AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-29
Updated: 2013-12-29
Packaged: 2018-01-06 15:08:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 5
Words: 31,941
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1108305
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Twilit/pseuds/Twilit
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Eight thousand years ago, the Earlternian Empire fell. Literally. Thirty years ago, humans and trolls fought a Great War over control of the North American continent. Humanity lost. Now is a time of high adventure, low morals and fast hands in the Western Wasteland, where cold human iron meets ancient troll biotech. This is a love story, writ in bone.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Papipalooka](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Papipalooka/gifts).



> **Scrimshaw** : noun (human) - a carved or engraved article, especially of whale ivory, whalebone, walrus tusks, or the like, made by whalers as a leisure occupation
> 
>  **Scrimshaw** : noun (troll) - ancient legal practice of carving writing in the bones of still living trolls for purposes of contracts, oaths, recreation or punishment (unclear/haemocontextual)

**4152 Sweeps Imperial**   
**1865 Common Era**

Your name is Aradia Megido and your life changes just before your tenth sweep. They come upon you on a wastesleigh, one of the large ones, dragged along by a team of fifty or so galloping hoofbeasts. It’s not like they’re there for you. The tall one, the troll, even says so.

“Nothin’ personal here folks. Valuables go in the sack or you go home in one!” There’s a manic gleam in her one good eye and a grin on her mouth so sharp you could flay skin with it. 

Behind her slinks a smaller frame. A human. For a moment, you think that it’s a servant or a slave, but from the way the lean troll stands aside for her, that’s obviously not the case. Her eyes are shadowed, deep black bags hanging from under them. Still, she’s beautiful. Your breath doesn’t catch in your throat or anything, but before now you’d never even considered humans attractive. Her gait is slightly unsteady, and while the troll goes around shoving the sack under people’s noses and brandishing a pistol, the human wanders seemingly randomly from passenger to passenger.

“Y-you’ll never get awway with this! I am the Courtess’s duly-” Your attention snaps back to the troll as she casually backhands the seadweller. The strike lands so hard it splits her glove and the skin on his cheek. The violetblood collapses bonelessly to the creaking floor of the coach, his silly cape settling over him. The compartment is a lot quieter after that and people hand over their valuables much more quickly. You clutch your medical case to your chest and hope that what’s in your purse will suffice.

The human meanwhile has flitted over to the aisle in front of you. She stands there, uncertain for a moment. And then she spasms fitfully, hands going to her head. Her mouth opens as if to scream, but no sound comes out and it remains slack. Her head lolls forward, her body slumping from the spasm. It comes up, her eyes rolled back in her head, twitching.

_”You,”_ she hisses, pointing at a human she cannot possibly see. _”You killed the child and ate her. In twelve days, you will do the same again, and again fourteen days thereafter.”_

The man’s eyes go wide even as his face goes pale and he slides away from her. “The hell are you on about, woman? I never-”

The woman moves in what starts as a stumble and ends with her straddling the man, two spikes of metal rammed into his thinkpan through convenient orifices. It happens so fast, you can’t remember seeing her draw the spikes or climb onto him. She convulses again and you clutch at your bag all the tighter. There’s a scream from another human woman before she faints.

When the murderess dismounts him, she looks unsteady, but the female troll apparently has no time for that, throwing another sack at her.

“Got ‘im? Good. Get to work.”

Watches, wallets and purses practically fly into her open bag. The bags under her eyes are still there, but she walks more easily, upright with confidence. The dripping spikes likely have something to do with it. Your eyes are only torn away with the appearance of a bag under your nose. You follow the hand holding up an arm, all the way to a scarred, weathered face. From here you can tell that her eyes are a steely blue, dancing with glee and completely devoid of mercy. You pray she won’t ask for more as you move to empty your purse. A voice stops you.

“Wait.”

The human has come up beside your robber and the pair of you look at her. One in curiosity and another in complete and total skirt-shitting terror.

“Eh? What, got another here already Lalonde?”

“No, but there is something… the voices have something to say to this one.”

There’s no spasm this time, no body-wrenching convulsion. She simply closes her eyes, lets out a long breath and opens them again. You are nearly quaking from fear at this point and one of the few coherent parts of your brain wonders which would be faster, the gun or the needles? Blank eyes near yours as she leans in, closer, closer, until you can smell her rank mammalian breath. You watch black-painted lips try to form words, watch them move past your face until she is whispering hot coals into your brain.

“Your name will be engraved on the bones that kill you.”

\--

Your name is Aradia Megido and you’ve never been more scared in your life.

\--

Despite that, you come upon them one winter high in the mountains, in a small cabin, surrounded by the skulls of cholerbears. This time, you are here for them. 

\--

Tracking them down had been harder than you expected. Blueblood bandits were more common than you’d realized, according the marshalderman who you questioned about it eventually. Mustering up the courage to go after them had been even harder. But every time you saw bone now you tensed up, shook a bit. Eating groundhen. Using some utensils. Performing, you know, surgery or vivisections. _Doing your job_. You had nightmares about them, about seeing your name curl out of the marrow in the flowing script of the humans or jut out jaggedly in trollian. 

It was only a matter of time before your hands slipped and killed someone, a highblood perhaps. You secured a transfer to the morgue, which guaranteed your life, but not your peace of mind. And being surrounded by flesh wrapped bone warped your fear, drove your obsession and desperation. Your autopsies were horribly thorough, ghastly things as you carved open corpse after corpse to check for your name. Your obsession was beginning to turn manic just as you came up for your first three-perigree mandatory extended leave. So instead of setting out to find a matesprit or other quadrant, you went out to find a bandit and psychotic human.

While blueblooded bandits were all-too-common, human corpses with a particular set of wounds were not. Your medicalacerator accreditations were sufficient to get into most morgues or precincts and no one really cared about the human files. Leafing through them during your travels, you came to understand that after the grisly murders, it often came out that the humans had been engaged in some manner of crime or taboo within their culture. Many of them make no sense and had no parallel in troll culture (what was this _incest_? _Cannibalism_? What, not even grubsauce?) and others were understandable. A group of men and women brutally and repeatedly stabbed for the rape of a young woman accused of witchcraft (which was patent nonsense - everyone knew humans did not manifest psychic powers. That was why they’d lost the war, after all). A whole town burned for a crime struck from the records.

And as you learned more of this young human, read her long list of dead and murdered, you learned more about yourself. Your irrational fear of bones followed you, there was no escaping it. But as you picked apart a groundhen at a campfire one night, spitefully tossing its stripped skeleton into the fire, you felt something else. As the bones popped and cracked in the heat, those sounds gave you some measure of comfort. When you finally got to the skull, you didn’t toss it into the fire. Into a pot it went, to boil, to be stripped of all flesh. This bone, this creature did not bear your name. It was safe. 

It would be the first in a long line of skulls.

\--

You slowly catch up to them, until in one small town the proprietor of a general store mentions that yeah, “Old Vriska Serket was back with her pet human in tow. Gone up to her cabin on the mountain, prolly for the winter.”

The peak rises above the town like a solitary giant, its top dusted with snow. The rest of the mountain seems bare, though there would be a while yet for winter to set in. The cabin itself is fairly easy to find, a whisp of smoke winding its way through the clear blue sky. But getting there is another trial. The patch of woods that it resides in seems to actively resist you, brambles pulling at your hair, roots tripping you up, and sheer cliff walls rising seemingly out of nowhere. A safe place for a bandit and her hoard, you’re sure.

You have to make camp three times to cover an absurdly small amount of ground as the crow flies. By the time you do stumble into the clearing, you are out of food and short on water. The raised cholerbear skulls glare sightlessly at you and for a moment you falter. For a terrifying moment, you wonder, _Do one of these bear my name? Have I fallen into a trap?_ Then a few dozen yards beyond the ring, you can see a small cabin with a porch. On that porch rocks a young woman, knitting with a pair of very familiar needles. She stills; she has seen you. The needles and yarn are rested on her lap and she watches.

You swallow and approach the ring. You make for a spot exactly halfway between the posted skulls and never take your eyes off the human. You pass between the skulls with a quickened step and your hair goes on end in the time it takes you to blink, surprised at the little shiver of cold that runs through you. The human cocks her head at you and you are reminded for all the world of a hootflyer. As you approach you can see her eyes, bright spots of violet, scour over you, taking in every detail. Your ragged skirt, worn pack and doctor’s bag, your wide-brimmed hat. They linger on your new necklace. She’s still staring at it when you stop in front of her. 

Unconsciously you bring up a hand to finger a skull. Skitterslither. Lizard. Sharp teeth. The serrated feel of them even through your gloves is… comforting.

“Interesting,” she speaks and makes you jump. Your start brings a smirk to her face and you feel yourself flush.

“Listen here, you! My name is Aradia Megido and last year you-”

“Made a prophecy about how you were going to die, yes. I remember. It’s not often I am Spoken to about things not concerning murder, rape, betrayal or other sundry crimes. It was refreshing.”

“Refreshing? Refreshing?! You ruined my life! I can barely operate anymore because my hands shake at the sight of bare bone! I see my name scrawled on bones in my sleep! I-”

“-am wearing a necklace of wards made of animal bone?” The human interrupts again. Her smirk grows and she is clearly enjoying this. Your heart speeds up and you take a step forwards, intent on wiping that grin off her face.

Cold steel at the back of your skull stops you and with an ominous click, the voice of Vriska Serket comes,

“You get the hell away from my moirail right now, rustblood.”


	2. Chapter 2

**4152 SI**  
 **1866 CE**

You’re not sure what you were expecting from a bandit hideout. There are no piles of loot, no dingy half-broken furniture and despite the macabre nature of the skull posts outside, the interior of the cabin is downright cosy. There are rugs aplenty, overlapping here and there. Some are woven from various fabrics, others knitted and others animal hide. A part of you that isn’t worried for your life wonders how it would feel to walk across it. 

A hearth takes up one side of the room and a small fire crackles in it. Before it stands the troll bandit, arms crossed, revolver hanging loosely from her grip. The human, one Rose Lalonde, has taken a seat in a chair, legs crossed, hands poised primly on her knees. Their mirrored demeanour speaks of casual interest and perfect security in their situation.

“So, spill,” drawls the troll. “What are you doing on my mountain?”

Your eyes dart to the ground for a brief moment before flicking up at her. “I just wanted answers.”

“Quite a ways to come looking for answers.” Rose gestures at your medicalacerator accreditation papers. “Your residence is listed as Austin, yet here you are in the backwoods of the Colorado Wastes.”

“I told you, your stupid ‘prophecy’ has cursed me! I can barely function back home! I had to do something or I was going to fuck up and get culled!”

“And your idea of something was hunting down a mass murdering human and a blueblood bandit?” Vriska barks a laugh, a brutal cackle of a thing. “I don’t see how a string of words could affect someone so stupendously brave or stupid.”

“Yeah, well, you’re not the one who can’t sleep at night for the nightmares!”

The human gets up out of her chair and approaches you. Sat down as you are, she is still only barely taller than you. Her slight hands take you by the chin, sending a thrill down your spine. She tilts your head back, staring at you intensely, and shifts it from side to side. Her eyes never leave yours and you want to wax poetic about her staring into your soul, but her intentions are much more mundane. She lets your chin go and raises your hand.

“Splay your fingers for me.” You obey and wonder why you do so so easily. She makes a small grunt.

“Despite travelling for what I assume must have been months without access to proper quantities of sopor you show none of the symptoms of sleep deprivation or sopor withdrawal that usually so affects trolls. There is that tremble in your hands, but I suspect that has more to do with your nerves at this given moment than rest withdrawal.”

She drops your arms and goes back her seat.

“What’s your point?”

“So what’s your point?”

You and Vriska ask at the same time and glare at each other while Rose gives a small smile of amusement.

“You complain of nightmares, but they are obviously nothing so terrible as the dayterrors that once plagued your kind before the discovery of sopor slime. Your fear of this prophecy is so deep, so intense, it has overridden a basic psychological trait of your species. In a way, it has made you stronger.”

“Stronger?! Are you fucking kidding me? I can barely sleep anymore thanks to your curse!”

“Yeah, but you _can_ sleep, and without sopor. That doesn’t sound like a curse to me.”

Rose nods at her partner’s observation. “I do not curse anyone. I merely gave you a glimpse of your future. You, your mind, did the rest.”

As your begin to retort, she holds up a hand. “Since this is an entirely psychological affliction, I believe you can overcome it. Indeed, I believe you have already started, judging from your taste in accessories.”

You touch the necklace of skulls and think of the pouch in your pack holding other bones, cracked and burnt from the fires.

“Furthermore, your newfound affinity for these items seems to have awakened some manner of psychic power inside you.”

“Eh?” There’s a click of Vriska cocking her pistol as her arms uncross. “You didn’t tell me she was a fucking psychic.”

“She saw the cabin and walked clean through the wards, Vriska. That would imply some manner of power.”

“But I’ve been tested! No psychic capacity whatsoever!”

“The spirits would disagree with you.”

“What spirits?”

“What fucking spirits?”

Another glare passes between you and the troll, this one made all the more tense by the revolver now gripped at the ready. Then Rose whispers something that sounds like nails scraping along your horns and you and Vriska wince. Your worlds go momentarily grey and when colour returns, Rose is pointing behind you. You turn and face a small crowd of tiny ghosts, the spirits of dead animals whose bones you carry with you. A skitterslither at the front of the pack cocks its head at you and an ethereal tongue darts out and in.

Your shriek explodes from your throat so quick and loud it hurts. In a bound you’re out of your seat and backing away into a corner. The heat of the fire warms one side of you while the other is chilled from the bare logs of the wall. Vriska has drawn another pistol and is aiming one at you and the other at the horde of ghosts, while Rose rolls hers eyes.

“What- what are they?” You wish you could back further into the corner. Vriska and her gun barely register to you anymore, which seems to irritate her all the more. The spirits just stare at you, shifting from moment to moment from appearing whole and alive to skeletal sketches of their former selves.

“They’re yours. Somehow, you have bound them to yourself.” Rose gestures at the infinitesimally thin lines on the ground, so small you did not notice them in your panic. In lazy curls and winding paths they connect you to each of the ghosts and you feel your panic mount again.

“B-but, I d-don’t want them! Undo this! I just wanted to _sleep_ again, I didn’t want this!” You gesture hysterically at the cluster of animals. “I don’t want this! I never wanted this! Take it awa-”

You never notice Vriska stow her pistols and you certainly don’t see her wind up for the slap that spins you around, off your feet. The stinging pain springs the tears free from your eyes and as rusted red trails trickle down your cheeks, you regard her in shock.

“Yeah, cry me a river girlie. So you have a fucking psychic power that has to do with ghosts! Boo hoo. Suck it up and deal. Some of us _lose_ our psychics, you whiny little shit. All I can hear from you is ‘wah wah, I want things to go back the way they were.’ Well too fucking bad! Things change! You changed! Like Rosie said, it’s probably made you stronger, you spoiled brat. God, trolls like you piss me off so bad.”

Vriska storms out of the cabin, willfully ignoring the ghosts that she steps through. Rose watches her go and lets out a small sigh. You swear you can see it leave her mouth in a tiny, curling whisp of air. It forms into something that twists your brain and hurts to look at before fading and taking the ghosts with it. For lack of anything better to do, you stare at her in shock.

She’s looking at you out of the corner of her eyes. “As crudely as Vriska put it, she is right. There’s no point running from this. I will not apologize for actions beyond my control, but I can and will offer you help.”

Surprised, and more than a little curious, you ask, “What? What kind of help?”

“Stay here with us. I won’t pretend that I can teach you anything about your powers, but I can teach you the mental discipline and tricks necessary for you to teach yourself.”

\--

Vriska basically exploded at the the thought of you staying with them, but somehow Rose convinced her. And so you spent the winter with a bandit and a serial killer, becoming a deserter yourself. Your leave was only three months long after all, and it’s not like you’d found a matesprit or a kismesis. 

Yet.

\--

You get a tiny closet with a single human-style bed. Well, pallet. Vriska refuses to get you a recuperacoon, or help you lug one up the mountain and Rose points out you don’t really need the sopor. She claims that facing your fears nightly will give you the mental fortitude necessary for mastering your powers. You decide that she's a sadist within the first night. 

Vriska and Rose share the only other room. From what glimpses you get into it, there’s a proper bed, a recuperacoon and an honest-to-Dark-Gods-Below pile. You blush furiously at that glimpse, shocked that Vriska seemed to be telling the truth about their moirallegiance. You’d always heard that humans weren’t capable of the more intricate, subtle troll quadrants. But then you’d also been told they had no psychics and you were living with Rose Lalonde.

She corrects you on that point one day as you walk through the woods. The air is coldly crisp and winter is on your doorstep. 

“Common troll propaganda is more or less correct, humans do not produce genetically activated psychics as your race does.”

“But you obviously have _some_ kind of powers.”

“Yes. And they come from our time-honoured tradition of making extremely bad choices and inadequately worded pacts with eldritch beings and devilish spirits.”

You stare at her. “You’re serious.”

“Quite. And why shouldn’t I be? Your race worships the Dark Gods Below to ward them off, keep them out of your minds and lives. Mine is simply idiotic enough to invite them in.”

Your disbelief quietens the conversation until you reach a stream and Rose starts her lesson. 

“Wash in the water.”

“What? Are you crazy? I’ll freeze to death!”

“Please. I do this every week. If you trolls are as hardy as you keep boasting, this shouldn’t be a problem for you.”

The cold shocks you to your core, blanks all other thoughts from your mind. The first time it is agonizingly painful and you don’t see the point in it. But by the third and fourth times, you can find a still peace in the midst of the biting glacial waters. By the end of the week, you can summon that peace up at will.

\--

The only reason you continue past the first day is the promise of Rose wrapping your dripping, frigid nakedness in a fire-warmed blanket after every dip. You imagine that her arms linger about you, but you are sure it is a delusion born of the cold.

\--

Even as Rose teaches you, Vriska puts you to work. To “earn your keep” you fetch water, chop wood and skin the animals. You’re also the cook, the washer, the chimneysweep. Your hands grow calloused after they split with blisters and to keep up your manual dexterity you take up knitting. Your body grows hard from the sweating work as even in the snow you haul water and chop wood. To spare your clothing, you carry these tasks out only in your undercloths, leaving the activity to warm you. 

Vriska nearly falls off the fallen tree she’s sat fishing on the first time she sees you fetch water from the stream, clad in little more than hide boots, a sheer top and your ragged skirt, the heat of your exertion lifting off you in visible waves.

She makes you carry her kills, drags you along her hunting expeditions as your muscle builds. As loath as you are to admit it, you are welcome for the breaks. The monotony of your daily labours is only broken by Rose’s lessons, so you leap for the chance at something new, something different, something _challenging_. And no mistake, keeping up with Vriska Serket is a challenge. She makes half as much noise as you do through the snow and twice the progress. Her berating and sneers get on your nerves and simultaneously push you to do better, if only to shut her never-ending prattle up. But the only thing that does is the promise of game, of prey.

Then she goes quiet and stalks with all the silent grace of a feral. Indeed, she claims one taught her how to hunt, a wild oliveblood that couldn’t speak and respected only strength. She glides up to a crest and lies down in the icy snow, letting its chill embrace enfold her before creeping silently to the top. Her rifle comes around and with barely a breath spent, she fires. You drag home an 8-point buck and you’ll have to skin the damn thing, but Vriska tells you,

“At least you didn’t spook the damn thing this time!”

Which is about as much of a compliment as you figure you are going to get from her. 

\--

To your surprise she begins to teach you to shoot the next day. Interrupting your chopping, she makes you set up the logs some distance away and puts emptied ration cans on top of them. Then she’s pushing an old rifle into your hands and telling you to try your luck. With a wince at the kickback, your first shot naturally goes wide which gets an equally natural snort out of Vriska. 

But then she’s pressed up against your back, causing you to tense. She shifts the rifle in your grip, jamming the butt of it deeper into your sore shoulder. Her breath is hot on your ears as she tells you not to be so firm, not so stiff like a fucking corpse. That advice, that order, is promptly forgotten when her leg moves between your thighs and moves them shoulder width apart, when her hips, bony still through the layers of clothing, shift yours slightly to the side.

Then there’s only icy cold as she retreats, telling you to try again. You aim, and try to put the memory of her heat out of your mind. You call up the still peace of the frozen river, but the feel of Vriska Serket’s body against yours remains. You curse under your breath, aim, and take the shot. It hits the ground in front of the log with a puff of snow and this time you get the bark of a cackle that you associate with what passes for Vriska’s good moods.

She tells you to keep practicing, shows you how to the reload the rifle and when your lack of physical activity starts to lower your temperature, tosses you a poncho.

“With some practice, you won’t be half bad, Megido. Not as great as I am, of course, but you might keep up some day!”

She smacks your ass and gets a shocked little hop for her trouble. Your glare follows her smirk all the way inside.

\--

The worst of it is skinning the beasts Vriska kills. It’s a task you carry out with no little skill, the knife at home in your hands, but still you do so under Rose’s strict supervision. She watches to see how you work around the bones, how your powers interact with the lingering bits of the animals’ spirits. Your hands still tremble as you strip flesh from bone, leaving it for Vriska to smoke or salt, but Rose’s hand or words usually still them. 

She doesn’t let you burn them until she’s certain she’s learned all she can from the process beforehand, even though you beg her to. You _know_ the peace that comes from the certainty that the bones can no longer harm you. Finally she relents and lets you make a bonfire of a direram, the largest beast you’ve yet to burn. Even Vriska turns out to watch the carcass smoulder and catch alight. The bones crack under the heat and some explode with expanding marrow. You watch, hypnotized, through the night, enslaved by the sense of ritual that hangs heavy in the air. You watch until the fire dies down and nothing but ash and osseous shards are left. And a soot-covered skull. Stepping up to the embers of the fire, you reach down and lift it free, drawing it from the ashen pile. It is heavy, far heavier than it has any right to be and you do not understand until your eyes make out the soft glow of a spirit still attached to it. You draw the direram to its feet, free of its pyre even as a gust of wind blows it out.

The ash blows from the skull in your hands, leaving a perfectly smooth, unmarred surface. You meet the eyes of the spirit, your spirit, and it blinks like an aeon passing, questioning. Tears spring to your eyes, colouring your view in rust-red, but for all your attempts, you can’t send the magnificent beast to its rest. You don’t know how.

\--

Later, Rose assures you that you will learn.

\--

Later, Vriska tells you that it was sort of cool.

\--

This isn’t how quadrants are formed.

\--

You’re back from relieving yourself one night when you hear the creaks and quiet gasps from their room. You would never have heard them if not for the still winter night, but in the silence they are unmistakable. Rose’s voice is high and breathy, and quietly cries Vriska’s name with desperate desire and need. You flush with embarrassment and want to get back beneath your sheets but you’re ten sweeps old and have never been pailed, so you find yourself creeping to their door and pressing your ear up against it.

This close you can hear the low, panting growl Vriska’s voice, the occasional slap of flesh on flesh. You catch low, taunting snatches of words,

“...dirty mammal, need it don’t you...”

“...like it, say you love it…”

“...ut up and fuck me, you impossible bitch…”

Low, self-indulgent laughter curls around gasps that come faster and faster, matching the wet sound of skin meeting and sliding across skin. There’s a shuddering creak, followed by a sharp cry and then the silence of a winter night. You are frozen in place, nook sodden and aching with need, not even daring to take a breath.

Then the creaking starts up again and you stumble away from the door, over to your closet. You shut the door a little too loudly and bury yourself in your blankets.

Sleep is a bad joke as thoughts of _’rails with pails_ take up your mind and the faces of Rose Lalonde and Vriska Serket, imagined twisting in ecstasy, drive your hands lower.

\--

The nightmares don’t pass, not exactly. You still dream of your name marked on osseous bars, but more and more it doesn’t appear there by magic. Instead the hard grey flesh of a troll carves them into the bones. You don’t recognize the hands for the longest while, until it occurs to you that your hands in your dreams are as yet unmarked with blisters and callouses. 

You ask Rose what it means that you are the one carving your name, what it means for her prophecy. She shrugs.

“If you were human, I would suggest that such a dream indicated a willingness to face your fate, to take it into your own hands, as it were. As troll psychology is largely alien to me, I suppose that answer will have to be as good as any.”

And this woman is moirail to Vriska Serket. Dark Gods Below save you all.

\--

Winter passes and the snows on the mountain melt. The river surges with new life and what shrubbery surrounded the hut springs back to its thorny green. It also heralds another change for you.

You come back to the cabin soaked through from getting water from the river and expect to weather Vriska’s hungry stare again. Instead you walk into a room darkened by flickering shadows that eat the light, absorbing it a sponge turned ravenous by unholy magic. Vriska is sat on the floor, holding Rose tightly in her arms as the human quakes and contorts in a mixture of pain and ecstasy. The troll’s expression is one of resigned impatience, but every so often, in the midst of a particularly bad spasm, a ghost of concern flits over her face.

The fit is over in a howling expulsion of consonants that are seemingly ripped from Rose’s throat by the air itself. You both wince as the sensation of ice-cold claws at your horns returns. And then she is still. 

As Vriska stands, still holding Rose, you move to their sides to help. But Vriska scowls and shields Rose from you. 

“Gods Below, I’m only trying to help.”

“My moirail, my problem.” she spits back at you. A shaky hand comes up and gives a light pat to the vicious face. The transformation is something miraculous as the anger and ferocity drain from the troll’s face. Your bloodpusher aches in envy and you suddenly feel like an interloper by witnessing the soft look Vriska gives her. The human’s eyes are darkened again, but a faint smile graces her face.

“A coach in Holburton. Three days.”

Vriska’s face lights up and a predatory grin spreads across her face.

“It’s looting time!”

\--

To your surprise it’s Vriska that gives you the option to accompany them. Rose spent a good half hour trying to convince you that you were well on the way to mastering your fears and spirits and that there was no need to be further involved with the nefarious pair. Vriska, in the middle of saddling her hoofbeast, simple shouted back at the two of you,

“Oi, Megido, if you’re so desperate for more schooling, just fucking come along. Now hurry up, we’ve got an appointment with murder and larceny!”

While the two of you blinked in surprise, Vriska swung herself into her saddle and set off down the mountain, dragging pelts and furs behind her on a pallet. 

You helped Rose saddle her own hoofbeast and struggled with the implications of what you were about to do. It was one thing to shack up with criminals in order to overcome your own problems, but were you really prepared to go out into the world with them, to be party to their crimes? Maybe you could stay behind when they actually hit the coach, wait for them to return. Even as you clambered up behind Rose and hesitantly wound your arms around her, you suspected it would be a dreadful anticipation.

\--

In the end, you did not stay behind, you rode ahead. While Vriska and Rose set up their ambush, you raced ahead on Rose’s horse, with the troll’s words ringing in your ears.

“If you’re not committed to this Megido, I don’t need you here or hanging around giving us away any half dozen ways. Get to town, sit down, and shut up.”

So that’s what you did. Head down, you fled from the scene of their soon-to-be crime. The hoofbeast took its stride and ate up the miles, crashing through underbrush and splashing through spring rivulets. You hit the tiny little town of Holburton, dust and mud clinging to you like a second skin.

Figuring to make yourself useful you get a room, haggling over the price and accomodations. You were insistent that you needed a bed in the two-recuperacoon room, not just a cot. The innkeep laughed you off, saying he wasn’t about to move a bed for one group. But if you wanted to move some recuperacoons to a bedroom, you could do that, he allowed.

Much grumbling and sweat later, you take a few minutes and suck down a warm beer. But the idleness gets to you and you start to worry. From Rose’s description, it shouldn’t be a large coach. They’d hit worse. All within the talents of a psychotic blueblood and a human witch. But still, the worry persisted.

You went out and bought a new skirt with some of your winter’s earnings, the other one so tattered it was showing a scandalous amount of flesh. You bought a hat for when Dimmed Sol was too high in the sky. You bought wire, twine and thread to make more fetishes of. And so you sat down at the inn, keeping the idleness and worry at bay by working wire and twine through tiny skulls.

Eventually, the door opens with a double crash and in stalks a singed and burned Vriska Serket. She stalks right up to the bar, completely ignoring you and barks,

“Two whiskeys.” 

You nearly sag with relief that she and Rose made it out safe. Then she slams both tumblers down in rapid succession and hurls one at the wall with an angry curse. Dreadful anticipation turns to dread and you half-stand,

“Where’s Rose?”

Vriska doesn’t answer for a moment, instead gesturing at the wary bartender for another shot. As she slams that one down, you ask again, voice pitching higher,

“Where’s Ro-”

“Fire,” she barks.

“What? What do you mean fire?”

“She set fire to the fucking coach in one of those bloody fucking trances of hers. While she was in it. Bloody fucking psychotic human, I don’t know why I even bothered.”

You stare in horror as she continues, “All that money, gone. If I ever fucking learn which idiot thought paper money was a good idea I am going to run him over with a tramplebeast.”

“WHAT HAPPENED TO ROSE?!”

“WHAT THE HELL DO YOU THINK?”

You sit down hard as Vriska turns away and just takes the bottle of whiskey from the bartender’s hand. She grabs a handful of glasses and comes to your table. You barely register this. Rose is dead. You’ve had people die before. Happens all the time in troll society. But never before has the loss of someone hit you like this. Not even your lusus’ passing. It’s like a hole opened up in your bloodpusher, where there was only hope and possibility before.

One after another Vriska sets out the glasses and only then do you notice. With perfect timing, Rose slips through the unhinged inn doors as Vriska sets down a third glass. With a vicious grin Vriska continues,

“She walked through the damn flames like they couldn’t touch her.”

Rose’s face is a study in confusion as Vriska bursts out into laughter and you just stare, trembling in relief and rage. You want to punch the bitch.

“Oh man, that was priceless. You actually thought Rose up and burned. Oh, wow.” Vriska wipes a glimmering cerulean tear from her good eye and pours the whiskey. You _really_ want to punch the bitch. Instead, you down the whiskey and wince at its burn. A part of you thinks, “How appropriate” and you take the bottle to pour yourself more.

_Then_ you punch the bitch.

\--

A couple of days and many miles of riding pressed up against Rose later, you ask something that had been on your mind for a while.

“So… how’s it being a human and a moirail?”

“Ah, so it comes out at last. Another bit of your troll prejudices rearing its head.”

You couldn’t see her face, couldn’t check it for the sly look in her eyes, but her tone suggested she was teasing you.

“Yeah!” you say, playing along, “Everyone knows humans aren’t capable of the emotional spectrum to appreciate proper quadrants! You all only have the one.”

Her laughter is a harsh thing in the wastes and causes Vriska to look back for a moment before turning back again.

“Troll propaganda might be right about that,” Rose remarks, surprising you. 

“What, so you’re saying like your species is actually emotionally stunted and you’re some kind of exception?” Perhaps Vriska’s rampant egotism was rubbing off.

“Heavens no. I include myself in that stunting.”

“But… your relationship with Vriska…”

“Oh we do act as moirails. I keep her from trying to rob and plunder every township from here to Oklahomabama and thereby correspondingly keep her alive. And she stops me from giving in to the voices and murdering every last sinning, filthy member of my species, keeping me in a similar state of vitality. Without one another, I suspect the population of the Louisiana Conquest Zone would be markedly reduced and our lives sadly so. Textbook, is it not?”

You smile a little, wistfully, “More like storybook. God, there are trolls out there who would literally kill for a relationship like yours.”

“Ah, but you see, it is tragically divested of proper romance, or at least what trolls would consider to be such.”

“What?” you ask, confused.

“While I am more or less certain that Vriska is romantically invested in our moirallegiance, it is not something I can return. I act the moirail, but I am sadly human. I cannot muster the pale pity necessary, and so must substitute it with a human proxy.”

You suddenly feel sorry for Vriska, something that grates satisfyingly against your nerves. 

“And consequently, Vriska cannot return my feelings, though she tries. Vigorously, and with passable ardour, at times.

"I love Vriska Serket, but she cannot love me. And she is pale for me, while I cannot be pale for her. So we pap and fuck and the end result is something neither human nor troll would call real romance.”

It is some time before you can manage to say anything for all the conflict in your thinkpan and bloodpusher. “I think you’re wrong. No one really knows how to do interspecies romance. You’re right, we’re too different to fit each others quadrants properly, but both you and Vriska… love one another.”

Rose looks back at you, surprised and sad all at once. “Be careful, Megido, that sounded something like pity. And there’s little enough like that in Vriska’s soul, let alone mine. Sometimes I think there’s not even a capacity for any kind of romance or love that doesn’t serve her.”

You begin to protest again, hating yourself for defending the blueblood, but Rose continues.

“No, that’s not right. Like everything else she does, Vriska is better than anyone I know at love. There’s something Vriska loves and all her sweat, all her blood, all her money, all of her goes towards it.”

“What’s that?”

“What’s wider than the desert, more open than the plains? Where does the wind brush your hair with more affection than the mountain passes? Tussle your tresses like a lover and a friend all at once?

"Vriska Serket loves but one thing and that is freedom. And in the language of this place, freedom’s name is The Ocean.”

There is bitterness in her voice, tinged with loss and longing. Her face is not one given to regret, but sometimes… sometimes. 

Sometimes your heart breaks for this woman, and fears for your own.

\--

This is how quadrants are formed.

\--

Your first robbery is a big one. A massive landbarge, so large it uses yoked tramblebeasts as its musclepower. Vriska’s eye is aglimmer at the possibilities for loot in it, and Rose’s are haunted by the presence of a gang of humans whose crimes she will not speak of, not even to her moirail. 

You’re left to hold the hoofbeasts because, as Vriska explains, “With that many tramplebeasts, they are going to spook harder than you the first time you saw your ghosts.”

Meanwhile, the pair of them hit the landbarge by a method that no troll guardiannihilator would, or even could possibly, consider. The barge’s passage takes it through a ravine barely large enough for it. As tight as the passage is, it inspires the tramplebeasts to panic and its speed picks up. Hatches are battened down and windows shut to prevent the inevitable tumble of rocks from hurting or inconveniencing any passengers, depending on their bloodcaste and species. 

And hidden away in a cranny in the middle of the ravine are your new partners. From the top of your perch and through binoculars you see them, at least twenty feet off the ground. As the landbarge approaches, setting the very ground to trembling, you have to hold on to the hoofbeasts’ bridles, but you can’t stop looking through the binoculars. The size of it turns Vriska and Rose into tiny insects assaulting a lumbering grazer. Before they are swallowed by the dust cloud, you see Rose grab Vriska’s hand and squeeze. In the last instant before they step out into thin air, you see Rose’s eyes roll back and Vriska’s gaze turn so tenderly pale it hurts you to witness it.

That thin air, in a moment's breath, became nothing of the kind. In less than the time of a blink, the access hatch of one of the compartments whipped past them and it was onto this that the pair stepped into. Then they were gone. Now there was little to do except wait. Every so often you thought you could hear the crack of a firearm, but through the rumble of the earth, you can’t be sure. Then, near the end of the ravine, a hatch on the top of the barge pops open and out scrambles Vriska.

She fires into the open hatch and then backs off as a flash erupts out. _A shotgun?_ you think. She keeps backing off and the hatch is blown clear open as a monstrous, black-chitined creature leaps out. Your breath catches in your throat and you can only choke out a single syllable.

“Fuck.”

The drone bears down on Vriska, a pair of shotguns horrifically welded to its hands. It fires once, then again. One spread goes completely wild and you see Vriska turn casually to the side, her longcoat billowing out. Then it’s drilled through with shot. Vriska holds the pose, and you think for a moment she’s actually fucking posing for you, but a quick look through the binoculars shows the woman’s eye half-closed and chest swelling with breath. She lets it out as the drone pumps its shotguns with a pair of feeble underarms.

And then she explodes into motion, both revolvers coming up and emptying in the space of a moment. The din is such that you can hear the firecracker crackle of the shots even out this far. Black blood sprays from the creature’s torso and joints as the bullets strike home. The drone staggers back under the assault and fires wildly into the air. As it tries to pump new shot into its guns, Vriska closes, drops her revolvers and snaps a pair of snub-nosed holdouts from her sleeves. Another volley sets the drone back another step and Vriska even closer. It stumbles over the ragged hole where the hatch used to be and Vriska skips lightly across it. Dropping the snubs, she draws the cavalreaper sabre from within her longcoat and with a scream, chops clean through the drone’s arm. 

In a blur she catches the arm and fires the shotgun point-blank into the drone’s face. An echoing _boom_ marks the end of the insectoid vat-creature. The drone slumps, its ichor spurting from where its head used to be, and then falls. Vriska regards her handiwork before tossing the arm to the side, off the barge. You see her collect her guns, wipe her sword clean and set to reloading. You see the horns of a guardiannihilator poke out of the hatch and you try to shout a warning. 

Of course, she can’t hear you, so you look around, desperate to do something. Your eyes catch on Vriska’s repeater rifle and you snatch it up. You have less than no hope of hitting the other troll but maybe… maybe.

_Breathe._ You take up a stance, jam the rifle into your shoulder and for a brief moment, you can feel Vriska’s hips shift yours slightly. Then you sight down the barrel and, as the guardiannihilator raises a pistol to shoot Vriska in the back, fire. Your shot kicks up sparks off the barge’s metal roof and causes the troll to flinch, but more importantly the _spang_ of it spins Vriska around. The revolver is half-empty, but she spins it closed and fires. Pure luck or unbelievable skill sees the olive of the troll’s blood join the black ichor of the drone in decorating the roof of the coach.

She straightens and looks in your direction. You see her gesture, but without the binoculars, you can’t tell if its a wave, a salute or a finger. 

\--

They return to you, leading tramblebeasts laden with money, jewelry and other bits of loot. And some things that aren’t loot. Some things that are, in fact, human heads. Before you can ask her what the fuck, Vriska bodily grabs you, slams you against the nearest outcropping and locks horns with you.

“I don’t need you saving my fucking ass, Megido.”

Her kiss is all tongue and teeth, no subtlety or care given and that’s okay, because it is so earnestly black your head spins for a moment. The grinding of keratin above your head sends prickles of sharp electricity through the sensitive nerves at the base of your horns and you break the kiss with a hissing gasp of pleasure.

Vriska disengages the same time your arms come up, so they close feebly on empty air. Your head’s still spinning as she says over her shoulder,

“But thanks anyways.”

You’re left staring between her back and a frowning Rose. Finally you manage, “What the _fuck_.”

\--

Rose brought the heads back for you. More specifically, she wanted you to bind the ghosts of human criminals because “their very painful and deserving ends are simply not enough. Furthermore, I think it’s about time you learned to communicate with, and perhaps control your bindings, rather than have them follow you about like a train.”

You looked over your shoulder and let the gauzy half-light that characterized your spectral vision fall over your eyes. The horde of animals waited patiently, a few birds and small rodents having joined the throng. You tried to imagine the humans there, amongst the dead eyes, and shuddered. Still, maybe communication would be the first step to releasing them.

So at the next town, you buy enough supplies for a bonfire while Vriska offloads the less portable bits of loot for sale. When she disappears into the post office with bags of cash, you are vaguely suspicious, but keep it to yourself and continue shopping. When she hands you a bag of coin, you’re even more so.

“What? It’s your part of the take. You did something, you get something.”

“Where’d all the rest go?”

“To a bank in San Francisco.”

“...and you’re not worried about all your funds getting, you know, robbed along the way?”

“Ha! Who the hell is stupid enough to rob a transport flying tyrantine?”

You stare at her at the mention of the Imperious colour even as your bloodpusher goes into overdrive in instinctive, nigh-genetic fear. You are suddenly afraid again. What have you gotten into, getting involved with someone who can casually mention an association with the Condesce and Courtess? 

“Well, get to it!” Vriska’s tone snaps you out of your renewed introspection and you narrowly shift out of the way of a smack on the ass. Kerosene, striketinders, and a lot of scrap wood all go into a cart and you make off for the wastes to have yourself a burning.

\--

Binding humans (and, as you would find out later, trolls) is a very different thing from binding an animal. There is a lot more screaming. Though, Rose comments, that might be because of their cause of death. She doesn’t elaborate.

You have to quell the urge to cover your ears, because the humans’ shrieks are genuinely loud and agonizing. Their figures flash from slumped, dully staring men to hunched, howling spectres, but the screaming is endless.

“Do you have any idea why this is happening?” you ask.

Rose shrugs, somehow blocking out the screaming. Or simply indifferent to it. “Beyond what I offered earlier, no. All of your animals deaths were immediate and painless. Furthermore, they don’t have the mental or spiritual capacity to leave a reactive psychic stain like a sentient creature.”

“You mean they don’t have souls.” Still with the screaming.

“I would never force such a vague and ephemeral concept on something that may yet be empirically determined.”

As the screaming reaches a new crescendo, you snap, “Dark Gods Below, could you just SHUT UP for a second?”

And suddenly, silence. Vriska’s head comes up from where she was cleaning her guns. “Wait, that _worked?_ Are you fucking kidding me?”

“My thoughts precisely. Aradia, trying asking them something else.”

The ghosts still warp and weft, their visages contorted in pain. So you ask, “Why are you screaming?”

And on an icy breeze comes the answer. “The flaying… the witch and the flaying…”

You shoot Rose a glance and she gives a small, self-satisfied smile.

“Oh. Can you stop fee-”

“No!” Rose nearly shouts. “Don’t you dare. Their agony doesn’t stop with death. They deserve this, and more, for all of their eternity or until their stain has evaporated from the material.”

Even Vriska raises an eyebrow at that. Worriedly you ask, “Rose… what did they do?”

She looks like she is about to clam up, avoid the question somehow, but Vriska speaks up.

“Yeah, come on girl, you’re not usually _this_ batshit blood-thirsty.”

Evidently, Vriska does take her duties as a moirail seriously. While you file that away for future reference, you tell Rose,

“Look, if we’re going to continue with this, I’m going to need what they did. I’m not sure if I’m okay with this ‘eternity’ sentence.”

Rose glares at you sourly, obviously irritated. She tucks a strand of hair behind her ear and doesn’t meet your gaze, but answers. “Fine.

“They’re anti-troll revolutionaries. They burned the hatchery at Peoria.”

Vriska lets out a rasping, “What?!” as you sit down, hard, your legs turning to rubber. You try to comprehend the magnitude of that level of murder and your mind just can’t, just can’t. You think that maybe, somehow,

“The Mother Grub? Did it…?”

“No.”

“Fuck the fucking grub, what about Kanaya?!” Vriska’s voice is still a rasping thing, like her throat is constricting around the words. You realize as blue tears run from her eyes, it’s because she trying not to cry.

“No one, nothing survived. They burned it all. The Mother Grub, the eggs, the grubs, the jadebloods, Kanaya, everyone, everything. Close to two million lives and lives-to-be. Gone,” Rose whispers, the hate heavy in her voice.

“Stop,” you say, matching her whisper.

“The future of the troll species on this continent. Set to the torch because they held a grudge.” Her face twists in disgust and she spits to the side. “Because we, _my species_ held a grudge.”

“Stop it!” you yell at her and go for her. Vriska grabs at you, but you already have Rose. And you’re hugging her. 

“It’s not your fault. They did it, not you. You’re not responsible for the crimes of your entire species, Rose. It’s not. Your. Fault.” Your voice quavers, because you’re still trying to grieve, still trying to wrap your head around that kind of genocide, but you have to tell her this. Because your bloodpusher, your heart goes out to her. You feel so _sorry_ for this woman, trying to do all this on her own, trying to shoulder this impossible responsibility. You pity the mind that sees the corruption of a species and decides to single-handedly stamp it out. 

You pity the soul that reaches down into the depths of Earlternia and makes a deal with the things that dwell there. And you whisper this in her ears as her arms come up and wrap themselves about you.

But there is no pity for murderers, no mercy for the slaughterers of innocents. 

“Burn,” you tell them. “Burn, in silence, for ever.”

\--

It is often said in troll romance that passion in one quadrant can inspire fidelity in another. So it was that Vriska Serket decided that she would never, ever cross or abandon you.


	3. Chapter 3

**4151 SI**  
 **1863 CE**

Your name is Vriska Serket and you have never been this bored in your life. You figured when your marshalderman arrested you for “conspiracy to commit fraud, theft and murder, eighteen counts of ownership of an illegal weapon, gross wastage of the Empire’s time, and aspirations above and beyond your haemostation and birthplace” your trial would actually be interesting.

But so far all you’ve done is sat in dull room after dull room. They’re always the same. Your chair, a desk, and an empty chair on the other side of said desk. The last one had wood panelling! That was new and exciting. It was the only new and exciting thing that has happened to you in the past _several days_. Or at least you assume it has been several days, because you have no means of telling the time and you have been severely sleep deprived by drone after drone whacking you awake with a manipulation arm.

You’re bored enough for it to have been several days, at least.

Just as your eyes slipping shut again, just as you feel the scratching call of soporless sleep calling for you, you hear a door open and the distinctive click-clack of heels. Thinking to irritate whatever tealblood had the misfortune of getting your case, you let your eye finish closing and groan,

“Goddammit, I was just about to get some shut-eye.”

“Oh, whale then, I suppose I shoal just let you sleep and process your dumb ass, nevermind the massive amounts of goodwill and carp I have for you for gettin’ me outta the same room as my descendant.”

Your shut eyes turn into a wince. Fish puns and implying they were old enough to see a descendant? You were being interrogated by a seadweller. Fuck your life. You sigh, and open your eyes to face the music.

The music is seven feet of tyrianblooded imperiousness, twice that of hair and about three times that of hungry shark-grin. Just before you pass out from the heady chemical cocktail of fear, panic and obedience pheromones, you think that you are either the luckiest or unluckiest troll in the entire goddamn Empire.

After all, it’s not every day you get personally mentally eviscerated by the Condescension.

On the other hand, it’s not every day that Meenah Peixes deigns to actually answer a petition. 

\--

Eight hours later, you stumble out of the judiciary blocks of Washington Prime, clutching a single page contract marked by Her Imperious Condescension. You’re being supported by a human woman in well-dressed clothes that your _other_ ruler foisted on you because you were looking so addled. The number of trolls that could claim to have seen the Condesce and the Courtess on the same day could probably be counted on the fingers and toes of your average bipedal.

Nevermind the number of humans that could claim the same.

“The fuck did you do anyways, getting the Courtess stuck on your ass?”

“Apparently, I am altogether so psychotically violent and murderously inclined that I am a threat to myself and human-troll harmony and interdependence initiatives.”

“Hell. You’re not gonna shank me or anything are you?”

“Don’t worry, so far I’ve only mostly killed humans.”

“Mostly is a pretty fucking worrying word there, human.”

“Is it? It could mean that I only killed humans most of the way.”

“Uh-huh. Does it?”

“No.”

The pair of you pass the massive stone gates of the block and you try to straighten. You manage it for a good ten, maybe fifteen seconds before you get dizzy again.

“And you?”

“Eh?”

“What did you do to earn the ire of the Condesce?”

“Ire? Ha! Try interest.”

“Even worse, then.”

“I asked for permission to use the Imperial Bank to store the loot I take off her citizens in regular and violent heists across the Wastes so that I could buy a ship and make my life on the open seas.”

The human stares at you like you’ve just grown a second head. Given the pounding in your thinkpan (thinkpans?) you’re not sure that isn’t the case. 

“And you escaped free of harm of the farcical travesty that your species laughingly calls justice?”

“Are you fucking looking at me, lady? Does it _look_ like I got off scot free?”

She regards you cooly.

“Bitch is charging a forty percent transaction fee on all deposits and is demanding half of my eventual profits from sea trade annnnnnnnd oh my god I just called her a bitch wow I am out of it.”

“Sleep deprivation?”

“Yeeeeeeeep. You get it too?”

“No, I don’t exactly sleep very much anymore.”

“Uh-huh. This have anything to do with that psychosis you were mentioning?”

“Not directly.”

“So how’d you do it?”

“I believe it is now my turn to ask you, ‘Eh?’”

“Get off scot-free from Her Imperial Courtesy.”

“Ah. I asked Feferi how her mother was doing.”

You stop at that, letting the human move along in front of you. She turns, hands folded demurely in front of her, like the perfect human socialite she appears to be. You get the feeling she’s mocking you.

“Yeah, gonna need some elaboration on that.”

“If you insist. In detail then, I asked the Courtess, the Only Surviving Heiress, Feferi Peixes how her lusus, Gl'bgolyb of the Vast Glub, was faring.”

The impossible syllables roll off her tongue like dark pearls being birthed into the light. You blink. Slowly. You also have a suspicion that you are advancing to the auditory hallucinations phase of sleep deprivation.

“And I suppose you did this speaking the language of the Dark Gods Below, since you and her seem so chummy and oh god that was a fish pun.”

“Yes.”

“What?”

“Yes, to convince her of my sincerity, I did speak it in Abyssal. As the tongue is properly called.”

Yep. Definitely hallucinating now.

“Alright, I’ll bite. Who the fuck are you?”

“My name is Rose Lalonde, late of New Amsterdam. Yourself?”

“Vriska Serket.” You look at the hand that she has extended to you. You’re a bit fuzzy on human customs, but you take it and kiss the back of her hand. Annnnnnnd she’s going a bit red. Is that a blush or a sign of being sick? Goddammit, you hope you don’t catch some weird interspecies disease from this too.

\--

You get on famously, once you’ve slept like the dead. Since she’s the only person in Washington Prime you know, you look her up and a few cafes, a few bars later you discover you both harbour the same basic dislike of other thinking creatures. You clash over nearly everything else, but what’s life without some spice, eh?

Later, she declares that the two of you really have something to offer each other. She does this in the chambers she's been given by the Courtess, which apparently used to belong to some highblood with a hoofbeast fetish, judging by the horrific taste in art. She does this by convulsing, rolling her eyes back in her head and screeching in the sanity-shaking voices of the damned.

After she's convinced you to lower your weapons, Rose explains that there will be a coach leaving Washington Secondspires with a human criminal on board. When you ask why you should care, she details the interior of the coach down to the gold thread of the curtain pulls. The implication is clear. The folks on that ride will be loaded, their luggage possibly even more. You tell her you could take it on your own. She tells you she doesn't care and that she will be going after it regardless so you might as well accept her help. You tell her you could say the same. She wonders why the pair of you are still arguing.

You concede the argument.

It won't be the first time.

\--

When she works her first magics, when you see the mess that becomes of her prey, you are suddenly glad you are partners, not enemies or even competitors.

\--

The first time she quells you, you're not even sure she knows what she's doing.

Your vision eightfold pulses comfortingly, encouragingly even, in your eye. It's a large coach this time and doesn't even have one of Lalonde's humans on it. It's all your show, and consequently, you're showing off. You haven't held this many trolls in thrall since you lost your lusus, and it feels... good. Then one manages to shake off your control. A mustardblood. Probably a strong psychic who managed to dodge the draft. You see the corona start to form around his head and he probably thinks its too late for you.

The pistol clears your holster in the blink of an eye and his knee disappears in a puff of yellow mist, his voice rising in a girlish shriek. As you stomp over to him and give him a kick in the side, you don't notice your concentration refocusing. It's been a while since you've done this, after all. He's going slack under your mental assault and repeated blows as you curse him and tell him what an idiot he's been. A slim hand catches your arm as you whip down your pistol's butt again.

In a rage you glare at the fool impertinent enough to interrupt you. Your psychics hit a wall of cold, implacable darkness and you recoil under the gaze of Rose Lalonde.

“Vriska. Calm down. You're losing control.”

“Pfeh!” you spit after collecting yourself. “You're not my moirail, you don't get to tell me when I'm losing control of myself.”

“Not yourself. _Them_.”

Sure enough, the other passengers are recovering from your mental domination. Your eyes go to Rose's small hand, still gripped not even halfway around your wrist, to the twitching, drooling mustardblood on the floor. Somehow you swallow the lump in your throat. You make no protest as Rose shoves bags of cash and loot into your arms. She leaps from the coach onto her hoofbeast, clearly expecting you to follow. You're still too busy wondering if this is what they mean by “struck by diamonds” to do anything but acquiesce.

\--

When you next hit a target, you are simultaneously more reckless and more controlled with your powers, because you know she could reel you in, but you want to show her you don't need her to.

You're still in denial.

\--

“Do you have a place to stay?”

The question surprises you.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, do you have a permanent hivestem? I imagine a powerful and resourceful blueblood like yourself must have been given quite the domicile once you survived wrigglerhood.”

“Oh yeah. I had this huuuuuuuuge castle up in the Massive Stoney and Snowcapped Crags of Rock.”

“Do you ever return there? Surely your lusus must still hold it for you.”

“Nah. Place collapsed in a rockslide. Took the old spiderbitch with it.”

“Oh dear. My condolences.”

You grunt in acknowledgement.

“Do you ever think about establishing a homebase? Somewhere to retreat to? Perhaps come winter when the traffic slows?”

You smirk slyly at her, “What, you askin' me to shack up with you Lalonde? Didn't know we were that close.”

She smacks you, but you don't miss the glow of pink at her cheeks.

\--

The lone barge crosses the Wastes by itself and no one on board appears to notice the rapid approach of two galloping hoofbeasts. It is low, broad and chitinous, obviously a relic of the Old Empire, where all sorts of grub-spawned autonomous vehicles were common. Where insectile legs would once have skittered, black wheels now roll. The entire thing manages to glisten despite the dust it kicks up. Whoever owns this thing must be rich as a seadweller. You'd worry that you're knocking a violetblood over on this heist, but it's not flying the ensign of any seahouse, so you're pretty sure you're safe.

When you pop the dorsal hatch and drop in, your misgivings evaporate. The whole thing is massively done up in luxury. Plush carpets, hanging curtains, veils of every colour and texture, they crowd the interior. When Rose pops in next to you, you hear her indrawn breath.

“Yeah, we hit the jackpot this time Lalonde.”

“Dear Gods Below, is that Imperious _silk_?”

“It is indeed, human. Might I inquire as to how you know the appearance of such a fabric?”

You spin on your heels, revolver coming up in a snap of leather. You hear Rose's second indrawn breath. From behind a set of curtains filters a soft glow. It seems to part the curtains and you suddenly understand. You can barely restrain yourself from pulling the trigger and only because the consequences of that action would be worse than not. And right now, the consequences of not firing are looking pretty dire.

Before you stands a creature of nightmarish myth and legend, flanked by two creatures of much more everyday nightmares. The glowing form of a dread rainbow drinker, flanked by six pitch-black and heavily armed drones. The drones are armed and pointing their weapons at you. The rainbow drinker is smiling.

You are fucked.

\--

Her name is Kanaya Maryam and she is a jadeblood from Death Valley. Her caste is obvious from her formal robes, even if they are of much finer quality and more... fancily sewn? You don't know much about fashion. She herself tells you that she is from the least hospitable place on the continent and that she made the robes herself once she came of age. Your surprise is rapidly failing.

“So you are being transported to the caverns?” Rose takes a sip of the tea that the rainbow drinker provided.

“Yes. It has been quite the journey thus far. You must think me remarkably rustic for it, but the first time I saw even the smallest town I considered it wondrous.”

“Oh certainly not! Your tone and diction speak for themselves, if you will pardon the pun.”

Maryam smiles, a bit too broadly and grotesquely long fangs poke out. She quickly covers them with a dainty hand, clearly embarrassed.

“Oh, pardon me.”

“Yeah, ok, now I've seen everything. A rainbow drinker, ok, sure. A jadeblooded rainbow drinker, fine. But a rainbow drinker that's bashful about being one?” You bark a laugh, eager to cover up your unease. The drones have retreated to the corners of the wheelwalker, obeying Maryam's orders unquestioningly, but you’re still in probably the most dangerous situation of your life. Minus facing the Condesce on zero sleep.

The jadeblood looks over at you, sprawled as you are on a pile of fabrics.

“I beg your pardon Mistress Serket, but I am new to the life of a rainbow drinker and still have much to get accustomed to.”

“Yeah? How new?”

“You recall me stating how… wondrous the journey has been thus far? This is not my first time being... accosted.”

Both you and Rose stare at her. And you let out another laugh. “You're shitting me. You got robbed _before_ we got here? Oh man, of all the bad luck.”

Rose, however, is looking around, eyes narrowed. “No, not quite. You were not robbed. This vehicle is made for multiple passengers. There are five recuperacoons that I can see.”

You catch on as Maryam nods. “You are quite observant Miss Lalonde. I was travelling with another four Maidens-in-Waiting. We were assaulted by a band of humans about two weeks ago. They killed most of the crew and all of us Maidens.”

“And that was when you...awoke?”

“I believe the proper term is 'was reborn' but yes.” Maryam looks off into the veils, as if looking for something to distract her. “While they were torturing the crew, I fed off the dead, a bestial thing of instinct and hunger. I can vaguely recall those moments, but it is as if I do so from a great distance. But the more I fed, the clearer my memory became, until I could see all the horror perfectly well.”

She takes a sip of her tea. “And then I slaughtered them all, with tooth and claw and fed on them as well.”

Well, that’s not at all terrifying. There's not a troll alive who doesn't know the tales of Old Earlternia, from before the sun went dim. Before humans had even properly evolved and trolls couldn't walk beneath the bright sky, there were terrible predators that walked during the day to feed on trolls and turn whole hivestems into thralls. The rainbow drinkers, so named because no haemocaste was safe. For some reason, you think you remember being taught they died off once the Old Empire did, but you were never big on history. Still, you're talking to an ancestral horror, having tea with a monster that used to plague your race in times long gone. You want to laugh, but you're not sure if it would be in humour, incredulity or cracking sanity.

Rose puts her hand on the creature's arm and Maryam starts a little. “I am so, so sorry for what my kind did to you.”

A sad, weary smile. “Your kind? Humans? Or bandits?”

While Rose blinks and considers that, Maryam shakes her head, gently shifting the human's hand. “Listen to me. Blabbering on about my life to two perfect strangers who were about to rob me. What a fool I must seem.”

“Hey, you didn't have the drones redecorate the place with our remains. You wanna talk about all the bullshit that happened to you, you go right ahead. Maybe afterwards you can listen to Rose's story or be dazzled by my daring exploits.”

Rose rolls her eyes, but Maryam bares her fangs again in a smile. “Perhaps I would like that. We do have time, after all.”

“Time?” inquires Rose.

“Yes. This wheelwalker is headed to the hatchery at Peoria.”

“Uh, what makes you think we're staying for that?”

Kanaya regards you sadly. “You have broken into a vehicle of the Auxiliatrices. While I personally have nothing against you, the crew is by now aware of your presence. I suspect any attempt to leave the compartment will see you face the other drones.”

“Dark Gods Below!” you spit. “More of them? How many of the fucking things are there?”

“A full dozen, I believe.”

“Surely, they must be desperate for your company then,” remarks Rose, strangely at ease with the situation.

“Oh, you have no idea.”

“Yeah, what the hell Maryam? I get that all jadebloods get rounded up, but you'd think letting a rainbow drinker loose near a Mother Grub would be a dumb fucking idea.”

“Vriska!”

“No, she is quite right. One of the reasons that jadebloods are assigned to the Mother Grub is that we are virtually untainted by any of the mutations or psychic powers of the haemospectrum. As pure as we usually are, we lower the risk of the Mother Grub developing any unorthodox genetic variations in the slurry matrices.”

That went over your head, but you thrust yourself back into the conversation, eager to defend yourself. “Yeah, that and the whole 'feeding on trolls' thing strikes me as pretty good reasons not to bring you anywhere near a whole clutch of grubs and defenceless jadebloods.”

“No, I suspect their very defencelessness is the reason I am being allowed to live.”

Rose cocks her head, “Ah. A fox to guard the hens. Quite the risky stratagem.”

“If I understand your metaphor correctly, then yes, you are quite correct. However, it has been decided that the risk is worthwhile. As I understand it, Old Empire records indicate that rainbow drinkers are functionally unaging. Should I prove to be a restrained and vigilant guardian, they will have themselves an eternal guardian for the hatchery.”

Something clicks in your head. “Ah hell. And if you don't...” you twirl your finger above your head, indicating the drones. Kanaya nods at you and Rose looks at her with something that makes your bloodpusher clench. You know pity when you see it.

“Still, hell of a risk,” you grunt out brusquely.

“I believe they considered it well worthwhile, given the circumstances...”

“What circumstances might those be?” Rose asks. “You have hinted before of something regarding the hatchery.”

Kanaya flushes jade and stutters out, “I should not say...”

“Ah, come on. We're dead ladies waiting anyways, what's it gonna matter if we hear a secret or two?”

“Well...” she is quiet. “Perhaps later. I believe I have spoken too much already. And not merely about things I should not! I should like to hear the stories of my erstwhile robbers!”

“Oh you'll be in luck then. Vriska absolutely adores speaking of herself.”

You flip Lalonde off, but do it with a grin, not bothering to deny anything. Before you launch into a tale of one of your larcenous adventures, you feel an icy tendril poke into your mind, and a ringing echo of Rose's voice.

_Speak as much as you like, dear partner, but stay silent on the matter of our... powers. We may yet escape._

\--

After a long while of you droning on about your exploits, you actually begin to tire. Kanaya (listen to yourself, you're on a first name basis with a fucking rainbow drinker) doesn't seem to mind and is actually a pretty rapt listener. Later you learn that to her, you're a reckless heroine straight out of the books she used to read. She's nice enough to let you use one of the recuperacoons, “If you are amenable to sleeping in a dead woman's receptacle.” You laugh it off and assure her it wouldn't be the first time. Rose, on the other hand, takes to sleeping on one of the piles of fabric scattered about. You make one weak joke about her dedication to a moirallegiance you don't even have and immediately wish you hadn't. Kanaya's face falls. Rose notices this and something like jealousy crosses her face.

Nevermind the fact that you're going to be in a wheelwalker with six drones for a week, you just landed yourself in a redrom triangle with a soulsworn human psychopath and a creature from the darkest memories of your species.

Yeah, you're fucked.

\--

Your ability to go on and on about your own life is tested in the week, to the point where Rose has to pick up the slack after your voice gives out the first time. Her tales are different from the action-packed adventures you spout, but one keeps your attention, keeps you from fiddling with whatever you can get your hands on.

_It’s the story of a young girl and her brother, left in a home without a mother._  
 _Their “father” was no such thing, naught but pain did he bring._  
 _They found solace with each other, he found this a bother,_  
 _And so the boy’s neck did he wring._  
 _The sister flipped out, and with a great shout_  
 _Called for the powers that be._  
 _So the old man did flee,_  
 _Chased ‘till eternity,_  
 _By the ghosts of the dead turned free._

Maryam barely understands human culture so it’s hard enough for her to follow the familial ties, but you do. And with what you know of Lalonde and the “powers that be”, you look at her a bit differently.

\--

One day, near the end of your journey, you wake to find Rose standing over your recuperacoon, needles out. Turned away from you, her face is still more expressive than you've ever seen, a torn and shifting thing of anger, anguish, regret and fear. You slosh into a sitting position and reach for your revolvers. Rose acknowledges your movement with a flick of her eyes, but they quickly return to a corner.

“What's the deal, Lalonde?” you whisper as you draw iron. You don't like your chances against six drones, but you'll be damned if you don't go out blazing.

“It appears our companion née captor is finally feeling the pangs of hunger.”

You follow her eyes to a corner, where Kanaya is huddled between the legs of a drone. Her eyes are massively dilated to the point where only the barest ring of jade separates the glowing yellow from the black. Her claws flex, digging into fine fabrics and tearing them with a disregard you're sure the jadeblood would never normally tolerate.

“Ah, hell.”

“Quite. She was looming over you when I woke up, but retreated there as soon as I spoke her name. It was... disconcertingly abrupt.”

“Said anything yet?”

“Her stomach growls every so often.”

“Fucking lovely.”

“I have tried to communicate, but at best I get a snarl in return. Normally she just buries her face in her robes.”

“Huh.” An idea forms in your head. “Lalonde, I don't think she actually wants to go through with it.”

“That fits her previous behaviour and general disposition, yes. At the speed she moved, she could easily have overpowered and killed me before I had time to react.”

“Yeah, there's a _reason_ they're the second most terrifying things in our myths.”

At that, a whimper leaves the corner where Kanaya has hidden herself. You sigh.

“Aw, come on, Maryam, I know you're not trying to be fucking terrifying, but I can't help what you are.”

“Yes, I am sure such a cavalier attitude is precisely what she needs to hear,” Rose hisses to you.

“You know what, you might be on to something there,” you muse. “Watch my back, but don't do anything unless I look like I'm going to bite it.”

You swallow, hard. “Literally.”

With more sloshing, you lift yourself clear of the recuperacoon and clamber over the side. You kneel and put down your revolver, keeping your eyes on Maryam. Ignoring Rose's angry whispers, you crawl a bit closer to the hunched rainbow drinker.

“Kee-chhhhhhah-keep away,” she hisses gutturally, eyes going even wider. “I ca-chaaaaah-cannot guarantee my composu-schaaaarrrRRRReeeeEEEEhhhh-sure.”

“Yeah, sure, whatever. You're new to the blood-sucking thing, afraid you'll kill me, turn me, I get it. You think I give a shit? I'm Vriska fucking Serket and I mouthed off to the single most terrifying troll in the history of our race and walked off with a contract and Her blessing. You're hungry? Come on then, if you get out of hand, I will fucking _make_ you behave.”

And you hold out your wrist.

Kanaya Maryam stares at the proffered limb and then up at you. You see the hunger in her eyes, the need. A little trickle of fear runs down your spine at that primal, predatory gaze but you hold strong. Because you see a girl with diamonds in her eyes and a desperate need to trust someone in this confusing hell that her life has become.

And in an instant, you realize what Rose was saying, because she's on you. A long, monstrously long tongue licks its way around your wrist before fangs pierce the skin, _just so_. Your head spins like you're on the best high in the world and the sigh you give is nearly orgasmic. You fall in on yourself. Distantly, you hear a sucking, slobbering sound and you try to focus on your wrist. Maryam isn't there any more and dizzily you realize she's licking, kissing her way up your arm, to your neck. You’re being fed on and scoured of sopor simultaneously. It’s almost funny. You feel cold breath on your collarbone and reflexively arch your back into her. She grips at you like a lover and a piece of meat and when she bites into you your vision explodes with stars and the cry you give this time may very well be an orgasm for the heat and cold running through you.

You tremble in her grip as you feel yourself flow into her. It's the most intimate thing you've felt in your life and you clutch at her, running your hands through her short hair. There's someone urgently calling your name, demanding an answer, demanding, demanding and for fuck's sake won't Rose just shut u-

With a jolt you remember Rose, your Rose, your human, your partner. And you remember what you told Maryam. The heat of your wound and the cold in your limbs suddenly snap into context. You'll die if this goes on. So you steel yourself, grip Maryam by the roots of her hair and wrench her from your neck in a spray of blood. The shrieking hiss she gives curdles what's left of your blood and is joined by the chilling sound of Rose beginning to chant in Abyssal. As the drones rouse themselves to the carnage occurring in front of them, you haul back with all your might and smack Maryam for all you're worth.

Her eyes go wide with shock, but it's a jade sort of wide, her pupils contracting and showing her blood colour properly once more.

“Yeah, I can't pap for shit, but hey, you're behaving, aren't you?”

You pass out, the last thing you remember being Rose catching the two of you before you collapsed on the floor.

\--

On the one hand, thank Dark Gods Below you're a blueblood and heal quick. On the other, you really wouldn't have minded lying in that tangle of human and troll limbs a while longer.

\--

“Why the fuck did you do that?” Rose demands of you later.

“Gods, Lalonde, are you blind? The girl's as pale as blood on snow for me. She wouldn't have willingly killed me.”

“Because that is certainly not what was about to happen.”

“Nah, what happened was me playing the reckless fool to lure her into being reckless so I could make a show of returning her pale feelings by papping the shit out of her.”

“Oh, you made a show of it certainly,” scowled the human. “I do not believe a roundhouse slap is generally considered a pap.”

“It was weighted for the context of the moment.”

“That context being you nearly dying.”

“Glad to know you care, Lalonde,” you wink up at her. Her nostrils flare and you think she's trying not to blush. But between that and her mounting anger, she only goes more red. “Besides, either we'd have to kill her or you'd end up trying to offer your blood. And I don't see either of those things going too well on your little red-struck heart.”

“You think I'm-” Rose stares at you, what's the word, begins with an- ah! Flabbergasted. Oh wow, the blood loss seems to be going to your head again. Too much talking, that's it. Probably Maryam's fault. You blink heavily, dreamily and reach up to pat Rose's cheek.

“Don't worry, still m' pardner. Heh. Parrrrrrrrdner. Heheheh.” Your chuckles seem to rouse the drowsing rainbow drinker on your lap and she looks up at the pair of you, blearily. Then her eyes focus and she tries to scrabble out of your grip. But you're still a blueblood, strong as the waves crashing on rock and you don't let go. It takes Rose patting her head and drawing her into the human's embrace beside you to calm her. The pile you're in is obscenely pale and red and Maryam looks completely lost and you have to laugh at that. She looks exactly how you feel, but you ignore confusion and let the beat of Rose's heart drowse you into a sleep.

\--

When you have to leave, it comes with a bang of cannon that you mistake for thunder at first. You're letting Maryam mess with your hair as the wheelwalker rocks with an explosion. You catch Rose as she tumbles across the room and cover her as the drones raise their armaments and aim at you.

“Stand down!” yells Kanaya behind you. The chitinous things freeze and return to neutral, but only for a moment as a hatch on the far wall opens. A tealblood steps through, shotgun aimed at you and barks,

“Drones, remove the jadeblood and then execute the blueblood and human.”

“Like hell,” you growl and your eye pulses. _Cancel that order_ you send at the tealblood. He gurgles a moment and then,

“Cancel that order.”

As the drones freeze again, you let go of Rose and haul yourself out of Kanaya's grasp, braid flapping half-done.

“Looks like you're getting _accosted_ for the third time in this trip, Maryam.”

“What on Earlternia-”

“Unfortunately, Kanaya, I fear that we are short on time. Whoever your assailants are this time, they have brought artillery. Any idea why that might be?” Rose stands and readies her needles in a roll of her wrists.

“I-, that is... I meant to tell you-”

You shoulder your way into your longcoat and check your weapons. “Last chance, Kanaya. We ain't gonna be robbing you this time, but if we're going to fight for your life, I figure we deserve to know why you're the target of so much ire, eh?”

Kanaya looks bewilderedly between the two of you, staring in particular at the flickers of darkness that are beginning to gather around Rose. Then the tealblood's colleague bursts through the hatch, about to say something, and you bark,

“Stop!” at him and he does. Now Kanaya's shocked gaze is on you alone.

“What, you thought we robbed coaches with just steel and our wits? I have seven fucking pupils in my left eye and if that doesn’t scream mutation I don’t know what would. Now come on, out with it, girly.”

“They... they're killing jadebloods, Maidens-in-Waiting headed to Peoria. It's the last hatchery.”

“What, on this continent? Yeah, no shit it-”

“No, Vriska Serket, this is the last hatchery on the planet.”

You stop loading your holdouts and stare at her. “What.”

She looks to the side and nods.

“What about all the Deeps? Vandem's Land?”

“The Deeps were lost to gas and pollution in the Great War. Vandem's Land was always a small hatchery, unproductive and under-staffed. The Mother Grub there just... died.”

“Fuck. Fuck fuck fuck! Lalonde, we-”

You turn to find Rose already a foot in the air, head lolled back, her dark corona blazing in full force around her. Through the hatch there's a flash like lightning and this time, thunder does peal. When her head comes back down, her eyes aren't just rolled back, they're blanked white with power. The corona is seeping into her very skin, turning it grey. Her head lolls forward, her mouth opens and you know the voice that spills forth. It's name is _horrorterror_ , a Dark God Below.

_bloody second-hands, do grasping reach for the last hope of the first children_  
 _they must not lay their hands on the daywalker nor assault the birthing caverns_  
 _we charge you, spawn of Mindfang, called Vriska Serket, with this task_  
 _go, do, murder, shoot, slash, kill, dominate, break, rend and maim_  
 _join our soul-sworn pawn and cleanse the soul-traitors, flesh-murderers, from Our Earlternia_  
 _we know your name, Vriska Serket, and feel your entwinement with our pawn_  
 _you will not disappoint_

You're quaking with the force of the pronouncement and nearly faint when Rose's gaze moves past you as she drifts through the open hatch. Still twitching lightly from the dark power of the words, you finish loading your guns and turn to Kanaya, who's staring at you open-mouthed. You shrug helplessly. You want to say something, but you're not sure you can manage words. Instead, you pat her between the horns and extend your mind towards your thralls. They bark orders at the drones and march them outside.

Before you leave through the hatch, you toss the unravelling braid over your shoulder and finger it sadly. You look over your other shoulder at the jadeblood. Over the crash of thunder and cannons, you find your voice.

“It would’ve been interesting, sorting this quadrant mess out. Ah well. Time to go die.”

You turn away and head through the hatch, into a storm that blacks out the sun and a world of fire and noise.

\--

You didn't die. The surviving trolls told a story straight out of the annals of the Great War. Human cannons, repeaters and rifles blasted away at drones and the wheelwalker. Enough fire was brought down on the relic carriage to reduce it to chitinous splinters. The Maiden-in-Waiting was found huddled under the corpse of a drone, undead and well. Of the humans, there was nothing of... substance found.

The surviving trolls told of an Avatar of the Dark Gods Below rising from the passenger compartment and razing the lines of cannon with black lightning and slicing, cacaphonous syllables. Humans simply... came apart under its assault. The trolls said how they quailed but for the psychic domination of the blueblood that followed. How her orders cut straight into their minds and through their mouths to the drones, who shambled forwards and added to the slaughter of rebel humans. They said they lost track of her in the melee, the last of them seeing her decapitate several humans before vaulting a cannon and disappearing into the storm. No one remembered how or when the Avatar vanished or when the storm ceased.

Of course, the surviving trolls only survived so long. Many succumbed to mindbreak and had to be culled, the psychic domination and appearance of an Avatar too much for their consciousness. Others were simply culled following their interrogations, the knowledge of an active human resistance deemed too dangerous.

That culling was probably the only thing keeping you from dying a legend. That, and Rose dragging your blasted, half-blinded body off.

\--

The next time you made a deposit into the Imperious Bank of Earlternia, you discovered your charges had been reduced by a full ten percent. You supposed it was what passed as gratitude from a tyrantine.

\--

That deposit was paid for by a roll of Imperious silk you crammed into your pack one night. It was a sore sale, because it still smelled of Kanaya, and Rose too, together.

\--

That deposit is made in a small town at the foot of a mountain. You wake up to a world half-dark and Rose Lalonde sitting beside you, knitting. The clicker-clack of her needles is not quite soothing, but at least it's familiar. You murmur something and she stops, puts the needlework down and turns to you.

“I beg your pardon?”

“So I _did_ take that shot in the eye.”

“Yes, and you fought on a good five minutes thereafter. It was quite some work getting it out and keeping you alive. It took a miracle, in fact.”

“Yeah? Ain't you rating your skills a bit high there, Lalonde?”

“No, you dense fool, I mean a real miracle. The Dark Gods Below know your name now, Vriska Serket. They thank you for helping me and your life is their thanks made manifest. Do try not to throw it away.”

There's not a whole lot you can say to that, so you keep your mouth shut and try not to think about it too much.

“And this is my thanks for following me out.”

Soft lips brush your forehead and you glance at her through your one good eye.

“So you're not too broken up about leavin' Maryam then?”

She stares at you like you just failed your first schoolfeeding. Her mouth works, opens once, closes. Opens again. Closes.

Finally she resolves to pick up a pillow and smack you in the face with it. “You are absolutely impossible!”

\--

Despite your blue blood, getting you on your feet is a trial. Eventually you manage it, but Rose has shouldered most of your burden while you laid in your recuperacoon. You find out that she's scouted a clearing on the mountain where you can hide out while the inevitable hunt for the two of you dies down. She makes you drive the hoofbeasts and cart she has bought up the mountain and makes you lug the timbers and pitch to build the cabin. As the labour tears your wounds, she dabs and rebinds them, even as you hiss at her not to bother, that you'll heal stronger. She knows, and does so anyways. You get the cabin built, just before winter. And just before the snows set in, you salvage enough timbers and scraps of wood from the forest to build her a real human bed. You make her buy the mattress in town, though.

The winter passes uneventfully, thanks to the wards Rose has thrown up, made from the skulls of cholerbears that you had to kill in the first weeks up here. The two of you try to stifle your giggles as a marshalderman and his possecutioners circle your clearing cluelessly and not a little fearfully. Then spring is upon you again, and after Rose's first spasming trance assures you there's people to murder, loot to be had and no lawtrolls for hundreds of miles, the pair of you are off again.

\--

Funny how hundreds of miles don't matter jackshit to a fucking dragon.

\--

“We really must deal with her at some point.”

“You fucking think?!” you yell at Lalonde while turning in your saddle and letting off another shot from your rifle. It's not hard to miss the large white _fucking dragon_ that's flying after you, but it's much harder to actually hurt the thing.

“Her persistence is borderline psychotic. You'd think she was attempting some manner of black solicitation.”

“You generally don't try to fucking _kill_ someone with a _fucking dragon_ when you're blackflirting!”

“I confess, I would not know.”

“You could have fooled me!” you snarl at her and draw a surprised, worried glance from the human. That may have been a cheap shot, but ever since the legislacerator got on your case, you've been on edge. Apparently, it's entirely possible you can enjoy the personal blessing of Her Imperious Condescension while facing the ire of her bureaucratically-inclined legal forces. And the face of the legislacerators today, and all the encounters previously, is Terezi Pyrope.

God, you might legitimately hate that name.

But her ire for you is evidently professional as another blast of fire sears its way between your hoofbeasts. You both veer to avoid the subsequent explosion and join up again on the other side of it. It's like you've had practice at this.

“I don't suppose you've got enough juice in you to zap the damn lizard like last time?”

“No, our foe appears to have learned. Since that heist I am tapped out, like the kegs of swill you do so love to down.”

“Really? Is this really the time?” You swear, this woman has the worst sense of timing when it comes to quadrant-flipping, especially _when you're not even in a fucking relationship_. You stew in your galloping frustration for a while, looking over your shoulder at the cackling tealblood every so often.

“Right,” you grunt, and haul the hoofbeast around, bee-lining for the flying beast.

“Vriska Serket, _what are you doing?!_ ” you hear Rose yell.

“Something incredibly stupid!” you yell back as you kick your feet loose of the stirrups and hop up onto the saddle. Standing unsteadily, you draw your revolver and looted cavalreaper sabre. As the dragon swoops for the kill, you reflect that you probably need a moirail more than you'd like to admit, because this is fucking insane, even for you. You fire a shot into the ground in front of the hoofbeast and it jams both hooves down, bucking you into the air. The dragon's jaws snap closed just short of the snorting animal and you soar over it's head in a wild, haphazard tumble. You hit it's back in a roll and come up in front of a stupefied Pyrope.

And then your sword is arcing for her neck, fast as you can swing it. They train them well in the legislacerators, though, and her swordcane unsheathes to block your blow just in time. Your advantage spoiled, you fall into deadly dance on the back of her _fucking dragon_. Your all-out hacking, slashing style of swordplay is easily blocked and parried by her more conservative movements and her darting jabs consistently nick at you. But you're pushing her back, ever so slightly.

“Facing me at last, criminal?” she cackles, aware that she's the better swordswoman. “You'd rather go down to my blade than a dragon's jaws? Can't say I blame you!”

“I don't fancy going down at all today, Pyrope,” you grit out as you fight for position.

“You've plundered Her Imperiousness' citizens long enough, Serket, it's about time you were brought to justice!”

“I'm plundering Her citizens with Her blessing, you tool! I showed you the fucking contract!”

“Irrelevant!” she cackles gleefully and launches into a blurring, awe-inspiring set of counterstrokes. You are at your limit holding her back and god _damn_ if it doesn't feel good to be challenged. If she wasn't so intent on delivering your head on a platter to this continent's Honourable Tyranny, you are pretty sure the two of you would be nipping lips right now.

Then, with a ringing rattle, she disarms you, flicking your sabre across your body and then out of your grip. Unfortunately for her, the move brought your shoulder down and pitched you forward. With a roar of victory you rush her and ram Pyrope clear off the back of her dragon. The look on her face as she falls is absolutely priceless. You see her hit the ground and roll, swearing and yelling up at you. The dragon hears as well and rears its head at you. With a roar, it makes to bite at you, but you're clear to take the shots you've been waiting for.

The dragon's underside is well-armoured, particularly around the wing joints. It's topside, however... You empty the remaining shots in your revolver into its vulnerable shoulder with a cheery, “Oh, shut the fuck up.”

As the howling dragon tumbles from the sky, you hurl yourself off in the general direction you think Rose is. Your impact with the ground is probably every bit as painful physically as Pyrope's was, but as you get to your feet to see Rose charging up to you, hand outstretched, you realize this is going to sting the legislacerator more. As your human hauls you up behind her, probably dislocating your loosened shoulder, you look for the tealblood. Your search finds her rushing over to her dragon-lusus and you flip her off as you ride into the sunset.

“Did that feel good?” Rose sneers at you.

“Oh my god, you have no idea.”

“I am so glad. Perhaps next time you can think of your poor partner, worried sick as you go to your apparent sui-”

“LALONDE.” You nearly shout in her ear, the shock of which shuts her up. “I appreciate the sentiment, but can we focus on what's important here? I just dueled a fucking legislacerator on the back of her _fucking dragon_ and then _surfed it into the ground_ while it _howled in defeat_. When we get into town, I am going to need a cask of whisky, a packet of hash and half a dozen calltrolls massaging me until I pass out.”

You swear you hear her mutter something roughly along the lines of, “Oh I will fucking massage you, you gibbering maniac.”

Or, you know, exactly along those lines.

And with more than a touch of affection.

\--

Drunk as you get, you pull Rose into your recuperacoon even as she sputters and slaps at you. The splash you make is completely wasteful of sopor, but you are so far past caring it's not even funny. Ok, it is. At least to you. She whines about the ruin it makes of her underclothes and you leer at her half-jokingly. She points her nailed fingers at your eyes in a wobbly V to dissuade you and you back off in mock terror. You try to force the bottle of whisky to her lips, chanting “chug, chug!” and spill it all over her near bare breasts before she snatches it from your grasp, and empties it into the spitoon. She silences your howls of protest by shoving a bottle of wine in your face after taking a swig of it herself. In short, you are a perfect pair of drunkards.

When you eventually settle down, lulled into sleep by the warmth of alcohol, sopor and the hot press of her body against yours, she asks,

“Why a ship?”

“Wha?”

“Why are you buying a ship with all this money?”

“'Cuz. The ocean.”

Amusement tinges her voice. “I'm afraid I don't follow.”

“The ocean. It's, you know, huge. Far away. Far as I can get from the Rockies. From a spider crushed under a castle, crushed under rocks that spell “plain bad luck” in the langwed- lanuag- in the _words_ of this world.”

“Oh Vriska,” she says and her arms wrap tighter around you as your bloodpusher thuds at the pity in her voice. “Have you seen it?”

“Yeah. Once. Jus' outta first molt. Sa-Fr'cisco. Fuckin' beautiful. Glimmerin' 'n' endless, like a puddle of my blood, just waitin' to suck me in, callin' me home.”

You look at her then, in the painfully honest, earnest way drunks do. “'s why I wanna ship. Sail it, f’rever, geddaway from the castle, from m' past, jus' be me, forever. Free from 's fuggen lan', this fuggen life, from the hee-hic!-eemospecrum, fr'm e'erything.”

As you drift off, carried to oblivion by the bliss you're in, you remember asking her, “You're comin', yeah?”

And her answer, “Of course, love.”

You didn’t know what that meant yet.

\--

Sometimes your purposes don’t align and you do your jobs separately. Generally it means that you have to hit smaller coaches and Rose gets to practice stealth and subtlety instead of big fuck-off blasts and public executions. So when Rose’s next target is ensconced in a large-ish township, you agree to split for a week or so. You hit one coach, then a second and a third. Your success and, let’s face it, manifest superiority go to your head and the third is heavily guarded by trolls and drones. So you don’t so much “hit it” as “blow it sky-high with a crate of dynamite.” The drones, unfortunately, survived the landing. 

That was fun. Patching yourself up solo thereafter wasn’t so much.

When the week has passed and then some and your wounds are only aching, you head off looking for Lalonde. Could be she’s just being careful, taking her time. But still, can’t hurt to check in on her. You’d just be another blueblood passing through. You do take the time to fish out some clean clothes though, so you don’t look so blasted scruffy. It’s a respectable township and all that, a proper set of hives and houses. 

Your first clue that something’s wrong comes with the scent of smoke on the wind. It’s not just woodsmoke, there’s the undeniable scent of burnt flesh accompanying it. You crest a hill and sure enough, the damn thing is on fire. 

“Goddammit, Lalonde.”

It looks to have been burning for a long while as the outer buildings are a charred ruin, smoke rising from them disinterestedly. The first signs of battle are scattered around the outskirts of town already. Smears of some kind of organic matter along the dusty ground, weapons blasted apart or abandoned. In the center of town, there’s still quite a blaze going on, and for a lack of anything else to go by, you head in that direction. The smoke thickens in patches as you approach and you tie a bandana around your face to keep out the worst of it. There’s signs of Rose’s passing as you close with the square. Impossibly splintered doors, troughs through second story windows, burnt corpses in cracked and broken repose. Before you turn into the main plaza though, what brings you up short is the general store’s shattered sign. Or rather what was hidden behind the sign.

The symbol of a pair of interlocking shackles.

“Bloody hell, Lalonde, what did you get up to with fucking Sufferites?”

You jog into the town square and see her final work, the center of the blaze. Every subtle sign of the Sufferer in the town must be set alight in there, the pyre stoked with remainder of the townsfolk. And before that stands a kind of gallows, where a young bronzeblood and a human male are hanging, suspended by their arms. They’re untouched by the fires, but their skin is scorched around their wrists. Your mouth twists in disgust and you get an inkling of what went on here.

But then your eye is drawn to the hunched figure left kneeling before the gallows. 

“Rose!” You bolt for her, covering the distance as fast as your lanky legs will allow. You come to a skidding, sliding halt before her form. “Rose! Talk to me here, come on.”

Her head is lowered, and she’s somehow managed to tuck her face into the top of her blouse, managing a facemask even more makeshift than your bandana. As you watch, the soot-stained grey of the blouse rustles gently with faint breath.

“Oh, oh thank fuck,” you whisper. “You clever girl. You clever, stupid woman. Fuck, I am never letting you go anywhere alone ever again. You get in way too much fucking trouble without me around.”

You move to pick her up and quit the burning wreck of the town, but see that she herself is shackled, and pinned to the ground with a stake through the links. 

“The fuck went on here, Rose?” you mutter, drawing your revolver and blowing the links apart. With that done with, you sprint to the edge of town, making for your hoofbeast. Rose begins to cough at the jostling and you pat her back awkwardly. “Just a little farther.”

When you do quit the burning, smoking remains of the township, you slow to a jog and lay her down. Putting an ear to her mouth to make sure she’s still breathing, you try to remember anything about first aid. Tipping her head back and pinching her nose, and praying you’ve got this right, you breath into her chest.

The first results are immediately explosive, as the human wracks with hacking coughs, gobs of grimy spittle flying up at you and spattering your face. You wipe them clear with a relieved grin and lift her up gently, laying her on your lap. Her eyes open up, flutteringly. A blink, then two, then watery eyes focus on you.

“You know how I know I’m a terrible influence? Because you said stealth and subtlety and all I see is a whole fucking lot of fire.”

A ghost of a smile sketches itself across her face, and she coughs. Then, “Fire and death. What the lot of them deserved.”

“Dark Gods Below Lalonde, I know they were Sufferites, but that’s a whole town burning there.”

“I have no quarrel with Sufferites, Vriska, but this debased sect… deserved to be wiped from the map.”

She hacks another gob of disgusting phlegm up and spits it aside. 

“Yeah?” you ask, “What’d they do?”

“All that talk of ‘all quadrants united’ and peace for all troll-kind, free of the haemospectrum… but apparently love between a troll and a human is an impossible abomination. ‘Beastiality,’ one demented indigo called it.”

Your nostrils flare and you growl, clutching her to you closer. “Beastiality? Fuck them. Can’t read their own goddamn book. Nothing in there banning interspecies romance. Hell, humans didn’t even _exist_ properly when the Sufferer rebelled.”

“I think that was their grounds for the label.”

“Fuck that. And the humans… what? Agreed? Just let it happen?"

“I hardly think I need to remind you of my species’ rampant hatred of yours. They were quick to agree, because what are trolls if not devil-spawned creatures from the darkest abyss? Such a -hack!- heartwarming thing, to see an integrated township coming together over prejudice.”

“Dark Gods Below… we are such a fucked up pair of species.”

“Indeed. I take it you dealt with the legislacerator then?”

“The wha-?” and then you see the shackles anew. They aren’t interlocking, but they _could_ and had to come from somewhere. The sound of bright wings in a smoke-stained sky precedes the source of the iron and you wrap your longcoat around Rose and you and wait for the fire.

\--

It doesn’t come, of course. Fucking long-winded egotistical bunch, legislacerators, so sure of their own superiority. As if you’re one to talk, though.

“Eheheh!” she cackles. “Not one to ignore a pretty face for long, eh, Serket? You snapped the bait right up.”

“Yeah, yeah, gullible little me. Better than consorting with that bunch of _traitors_ and _speciesists_ burning back there.”

Pyrope’s grin turns into an angry grimace in the blink of your one good eye. “Misguided and backwards though they were, they were still followers of the Signless Sufferer. The human will get her due.”

You burst out laughing, a harsh cackle to match hers. “Did I just fucking hear right? A legislacerator, admitting she’s a Sufferite? How the hell have you not hung yourself yet?”

The grimace turns into a snarl, “Because _justice_ and the teaching of the Sufferer go hand in hand and I serve justice before the word of a tyrant-”

“Justice? Are you fucking kidding me here? They left a human and a troll to sear and die of exposure over _romance_! Why the hell you didn’t raze the town with your own dragon is fucking bey-”

“Stop making this about them!” Pyrope screeches. “I am here for you, Vriska Serket, and for your crimes I’ll see your head delivered to His Honourable Tyranny on a platter.”

“Dark Gods Below, you are so twisted it’s almost funny.” You lay Rose to the ground and hold her cheek. She is so frail right now, completely drained after calling down her vengeance. So weak, but she nuzzles your gloved hand anyway. “I am not letting you out of my sight again, you hear me? I nearly blew myself up with a half dozen drones without you to rein me in.”

“Dear Serket, are you suggesting-”

“Quiet. Talk later.” You stand and from the folds of your longcoat draw steel and cold iron. “Fine Pyrope. You want me, come and get me. But you’re not getting my moirail unless it’s over my cold, dead body.”

“Moirail? Ha! You’re so deluded, it’s almost funny!” And with a smooth motion she kicks a repeater up into her grip from the ground. She brings it up to her cheek and draws the hammer back. “But I’m not so deluded to let you close, oh no Vriska. I’m the better fighter, but you’re viciously clever, I’ll give you that. Dealing with you from here will suffice.”

You advance regardless. “Go ahead and try.”

“Think you can get to me before I fire? Fat chance.”

“I think,” you say, as you take another step, “that I’m Vriska Serket. And the Dark Gods know my name.”

\--

Humans quickly adapted the revolver design for long-rifles, it being a logical progression of technology. However, the revolving chambers were ill-suited to the larger calibre of a rifle. The larger flash and gas-explosion following the initial discharge had a tendency to ignite loose and errant gunpowder that accumulated around the various mechanisms, in turn igniting the remaining rounds in the chamber, causing a “chain fire” that sent shards of metal and fire in all directions. This led to an understandable distrust in the weapon and it was relegated to reserves and militias in favour of the newer lever-action rifle.

\--

Legislacerators are trained with every weapon imaginable and despite their preference for ending a hunt at close range, delivering judgement at the point of a sword, they are universally excellent shots. And have no qualms about using human weaponry. Because they are legislacerators, however, they train with the best equipment possible, regularly cleaned and maintained so as to be in perfect working condition. Pyrope aims for center mass with the militia rifle, an impossible shot to miss. But the Dark Gods Below know your name.

\--

You leave the screaming and crying tealblood to her whining, whimpering dragon and take Rose away. The walk passes in silence, for which you’re glad. The only thing keeping you from trembling and laughing manicly in an adrenaline rush is your need to not let go of the human in your arms. You find a hoofbeast and lift her into the saddle, then clamber up after her. Nudging the beast in the general direction of “away” you retreat into the night.

Her coughing dies off and Rose’s breath comes more and more steadily, and deeper still, until you realize she’s fallen asleep in your arms. The blazing township is a distant, flickering speck on the horizon behind you, and you cast about for a place to make camp for the night. Finding a small overhang eventually, you dismount and carry Rose to it, laying her out and arranging the camp around her. You light the fire and roll out a sleeping bag for her, doing all this with an exact sort of care completely alien to you. With painful tenderness you move her to the sleeping bag and manage to almost get her tucked in before her eyes flutter open again.

“Damn. Almost made it.”

A small bow-like smile, real amusement, untinged with scorn. She shifts slightly and her arm comes out to grasp your hand, squeezing it. “So. Moirails?”

“Look, we are clearly threats to ourselves and the world around us without the other there to say ‘don’t be a dumbass’ or ‘don’t set the goddamn town on fire’ so I don’t really know about you, but I really think that calls for a moiralle-”

“Vriska, I can’t.” 

There’s a feeling in your chest so intense you wish Pyrope _had_ killed you, because all the life is draining from you in the most painful way possible as Rose lets go of your hand.”

“I’m human, Vriska. I don’t feel pale for you. I feel for you, yes, dear Gods Below yes, but I can’t do pale. I’m human.” Her hand moves from your grasp to cup at your cheek, so close to a pap you want to cry, want her to, wan- “I- I can’t be what you want me to be.”

And like that your bloodpusher is a hammering mess. “Rose, I don’t fucking want you to be anything other than what you are every fucking day I’m around you. A snarky, over-confident bitch who holds my leash and doesn’t let go for anything.”

She’s flushing red, laughing softly. “A leash? Fitting, I suppose, for another female dog.”

“Will you? Please, will you be my moirail, hold me back, hold me up and let me do the same for you? Because I swear to god I am going to kill myself at this rate and I think you will too so please, Dark Gods please-”

Her hand shifts again, covering your mouth. “Only- I can do all that and more. Only, I want more. I love you, Vriska Serket, in this simple human way. Neither flushed nor pale, but still I love you. My heart beats in time to yours, clenches up every time you look at me and I want you in every way I can have. I’ll be your moirail Vriska, if you’ll be my lover.”

She releases your mouth and guides another hand up and into your hair. Down, down she draws you, closer and closer to her lips until your blood thunders in your head and her name is on your tongue.

“Rose…” you breath, and your lips brush and where they touch is like a fire, an obscene need that nearly burns the pale from your mind. But it’s as simple as this: your moirail needs you, and you need her. “Yes, Rose, yes.”

Her lips are wet and hot on yours and she tastes of ash and soft human flesh. You are careful, oh so careful with your teeth, your sharp fangs, but she does not care and hungrily invades your mouth with her tongue. Her hand tightening in your tangled mess of hair, her arms tightening around your shoulders, she pulls you down onto her with a high, needy whimper and like that you’re lost. You can barely manage to brace yourself above her before she breaks of the kiss, leaving you hot and dizzy but oh, oh wait. Soft lips trace your jaw and blunt teeth nip at the skin of your neck and you gasp and press into her with need. Her hands slide lower, pale, chill things that trace delicate lines down your neck, your collarbones. As she sucks at your neck and you trill at the sensation, quick, clever fingers flit open your buttons and suddenly her mouth is at your ear,

“Get in here, love.”

It’s a desperate scrabble of arms and legs as you try to fit into the sleeping bag with her as she undresses you, undresses herself, but what follows, oh what follows. If her cries aren’t enough to drive away the threats of night, your howls must be. In a carnal fury, flushed deep, dark red, the bag is torn and stained until you are both sated, blind tired and curled up under the open sky.


	4. Chapter 4

**4153 SI**  
 **1867 CE**

It's amazing what a year can do, you think to yourself as you look in the mirror and draw on your blouse. A year ago, you were a wild-eyed, panicky bandit trying to do right by the people who took you in. A year and a bit ago you were a dumpy medicalacerator so scared you couldn't sleep right. Fast forward to you now... well, no one's going to be calling you dumpy, or scared for that matter.

You leave Rose in the bed and Vriska in the recuperacoon and head out into the town. Your entrance to the town had been a quiet affair, stabling the hoofbeasts and getting a room. The whole production was accomplished with a minimum of fuss, and for Vriska Serket that was an accomplishment. Posing as a matesprited pair while your actual matesprit posed as a servant behind you was enough to flip you black for your “matesprit” a couple of times. But from the way the innkeeper rolled his eyes, you assume that only lent some credence to the performance.

Now they sleep, while you carry out your end of the operation. The local jail houses a makeshift morgue, little more than a really cold cellar, and your prize was in there. The marshalderman is already at his post, which will hopefully not be more than a minor inconvenience. He takes in your professional demeanour, open hands and complete lack of armaments and moves his hand away from his holster.

“Good morning!” you chirp.

“Yeah, and real early.” Clearly he's not a morning person. “Can I help you, ma'am?”

His eyes betray him as a rustblood, just like you, which should make this _even easier_.

“Yes, please,” you continue, as brightly and politely as you could manage. It puts trolls off, and makes them think you're a bit dim. “I'd like to see the corpse of one Jakar Vargas.”

You take out a worn piece of paper marked with a fading ink seal that names you as Aradia Megido, medicalacerator out of Austin. You follow it up with a brand new piece of paper containing your “orders.”

The marshalderman takes the papers with a suspicious squint, but as his lips move and he figures out why you're here he shrugs and waves you inside.

“This guy wanted elsewhere?”

“Yep! In a few counties around Texas.”

“Well, yer welcome to the body so long as you done brought your own transportation.”

“Oh no, I just need to identify him to confirm the execution. No transportation here!”

A grunt in return. He leads you past mostly empty cells and into the cellar where the temperature promptly drops. As the door shuts behind you, he squeezes a glow-grub and you blink in surprise. He smirks.

“Ain't seen many of them before, eh? We're lucky, this place got set up a long time ago, left a bunch of critters from before the War. Damn sight more useful than a torch and cooler besides.”

Then he gestures at the bags in front of you.

“Third from the left.”

You kneel before the bag and let the cold fill you, calm you, still you. You murmur, “It might get a bit colder in here,” just before the temperature plummets further and you reach out for the body, _out_ of your body, _into_ the body of Jakar Vargas.

“W-what the hell?” the marshalderman is reaching for his sidearm.

“Nothing to worry about,” you murmur, your concentration split. “Just the side-effect of the power going off.”

Funny how much a year can change you. You don't even need to burn the bones anymore, but you do use up all the surrounding heat.

“Yer papers ain't said nothin' about psychery!” he glances back down at them and starts. “Hang on, these’re expired!”

You suck at your teeth and spin around, coming up smoothly, a sawn-off drawn from the bustle of your skirt even as the ghost of Jakar Vargas rises from his corpse. The other troll freezes in fright, hand halfway to the revolver.

“Well, I tried doing this the easy way. Hands away from your gun.”

“Oh, oh god, what you doing? What you done? What you gonna do to me?”

“Absolutely nothing so long as you co-operate. I just need to speak to the dead for a bit. Turn around now, please.”

“Speak to the...? You ain't gonna rob me?”

“Not really. Worst case I might need the body. Now, TURN AROUND.”

As he does so and turns away from the ghostly apparition at your back, he seems to get some nerve back. “You'll... you'll never get away with this!”

“What, robbing a morgue? Please, I get away with worse on a weekly basis.”

“We'll come after y-”

“Oh enough of this,” you say and whack him with the butt of the shotgun. Vriska has had a terrible influence on your patience. The troll crumples to the ground. Locating some rope, you tie him up and set him in the corner of the cellar. Your aim isn't great, and your knitting worse, but you took to knots like you were born on a hemp plantation. But just for good measure, you jam his kerchief in his mouth.

“Now then, Vargas,” you begin, turning back to the ghost, “I'm going to need to know where you lot buried your haul.”

–

“Sixteen _thousand_ dollars! Whoooooooo-EE!”

Vriska fans herself with a stack of the money as Rose finishes the count. The three of you quit town as soon as you got the location of the hidden haul. No sense in waiting for someone to find the marshalderman. You're hundreds of miles and several days away, resting in a smaller town. Resting might be a stretch though, since the most work you've done is digging a hole. Which, granted, was hard labour, but nothing like knocking over a landbarge.

“Well, move your ass and deposit your share,” you say, slipping another rubber band around a stack.

“You're not the boss of me, Megido!” Vriska sneers at you, happily. One of the only people in the world who can manage to sneer happily, you imagine.

“No, but you always take forever, and we're on a schedule, remember?”

She rolls her eyes, but she's already scooping her pile into a sack. Tossing it over her shoulder, she flips you the bird, pats Rose on the head and slips out the door, a tall, cackling shadow in cerulean.

Rose moves your piles of money into the chest you share, shuts it, and snaps the keyless lock shut. Then she flops down on the bed, completely graceless, and you have to giggle at her. She raises her eyebrow at you.

“Do not pretend that you are not equally tired, Aradia dear, and do not want to join me.”

“Oh I'm tired, but clearly not so much as you,” you tease, crawling up beside her. “You should probably get some more exercise if a little digging took that much out of you.”

“Dear Gods Below, you are trying to kill me. Look! Look how my arm trembles from even so little labour!” She holds out a slim, quaking arm and you laugh quietly, taking it up in your hands. You marvel at the delicate bones and soft skin of the woman in bed with you. As you filled out and went through your final molt, you grew to the point where now your arm is thicker than her leg. But still you trace a line up her arm, lightly, so lightly and smile at the shiver she gives.

“Does it bother you, ever? Being in two qua- romances, I mean?”

Rose sighs and looks at you in mixed bemusement and irritation. “Aradia, you know your curiosity, your drive for learning is one of the things that I love the most about you. But honestly woman, learn to take some things at face value.”

You feel slightly ashamed and move to bury your face in a pillow. But Rose catches your chin and with her tiny, frail hands, forces you to look at her. “Do you remember what I said, damn fool?”

You nod, your throat tight and unable to give voice to words.

“That I supposed that if I could reconcile, no, not even reconcile, embrace an interspecies romance, I could also embrace polyamory? Dammit, I have been around you trolls so long, I look at the word 'polyamory' and wonder what manner of species would even have need of it!”

“I know,” you say softly, tinily. Sometimes Rose talks to you like she's schoolfeeding you, but you're self-aware enough to know sometimes you deserve it (and have enough backbone now to tear her a new one when you don't).

“Then stop asking these questions. I am perfectly content with both you and Vriska, aside from the ever-present suspicion that this surfeit of happiness will inevitably lead to some manner of karmic retribution!”

“Hey now, no doom and gloom. Happiness and contentment, remember?”

“Then make me happy,” she growls, a low, rough and animal thing that only a throat accustomed to abyssal syllables could manage. It curls up your spine and promises things that only a soft mouth and clever tongue could deliver, even as she rolls you over and buries blunt teeth in the muscles of your neck.

Your gasp is only the overture of the song she plays on your body.

–

Of course, you turn up late to the meet-up. Vriska does not let the two of you hear the end of it until you make it to the cabin on the mountain and not even then, until she's had both of you.

–

Before winter sets in properly, you and Vriska build an extension to the cabin. While Rose refreshes the wards around the clearing, the pair of you chop and saw wood. Daubing gets bought from the town at the foot of the mountain, as well as the furnishings for the room. You nearly hack limbs off each other in the process of building the thing, but eventually it comes together.

The pair of you wrestle the quadrant-sized recuperacoon into the extension and then repair the hole you had to knock in the cabin's wall to fit it. As punishment for your shocking lack of foresight, Rose knits you two a slip for the 'coon. It is hideous.

The snows are late this year, and Vriska gets the brilliant idea to build a basement. Her idea of this is trying to make you dig the whole thing, which gets her a cracking horn butt and a shovel jammed into her stomach. It's hard work, digging in near-frozen ground, though Rose helps a little by _roasting the soil with her mind_. In the end, the basement is a tiny room hidden under the cabin that you store loot and extra weapons in. Jewellery that Vriska liked too much to sell, the money you and Rose earned from the heists, your growing collection of shotguns, Vriska's collection of swords and sabers, and all of Rose's books, tomes and texts. What space is left over was given to extra supplies and alcohol.

In short, you are well prepared to pass another winter in warm and comfortable debauchery.

Optimism was always one of your weak points.

–

They come upon you one night when you and Rose are knitting on the porch, a small stovier keeping you warm. Hunched shapes flicker around the edge of the clearing, well hidden enough that you think you're seeing things. Then Rose smirks and points them out. A group of humans and trolls, walking in a rough circle around the clearing, seemingly lost.

Rose whispers to you that they are probably looking for you, but the wards are confusing them, misdirecting them. At one point, a troll with a spectacular, ramrod straight set of horns looks like he's about to walk right into a cholerbear skull and promptly trips, falling flat on his face. You bite your lip to suppress a giggle as he gets up, swearing, and sets off in the wrong direction. Rose and you pass your evening like this snickering to yourselves and knitting.

They come back a week later, while the three of you are drinking and playing cards. And they come back with a low-grade psychic. So low, in fact, that you and Rose completely miss him until he points directly at the cabin with a flicker of discharge between his horns. Then Rose is swearing, needles coming up, the bolt of lightning cracking straight through the psychic. Vriska's paired revolvers bark a moment later, taking out two more. The group is out of range of your shotgun, but you let off a blast anyways, encouraging their retreat.

Vriska is barking orders, and it takes you a full second to realize that they actually make sense rather than her being a controlling, self-aggrandizing bitch. With a snap of frost, you call up a ghost of one of the trolls and demand answers. Apparently, the rest of Jakar Vargas' band has come to reclaim their money.

As soon as she hears this, Vriska sets to work boarding up the windows of the cabin with spare wood, leaving holes to aim from. Rose fixes the breached perimeter and in the midst of this, you are about to ask what the big deal is, you drove them off.

Then you remember, _sixteen thousand dollars_ and you set to raising the ghosts. You might be facing an army.

The bones of the dead bandits and several direstags and cholerbears that you've killed over the course of the winter go into a massive bonfire and you call their spirits forth to defend your home. You're a figure from the earliest days of troll culture, a priestess invoking gods that didn't exist and demanding favours of their servants. Rose and Vriska add to the bonfire periodically until you have enough spirits for a _haunting_. You set them loose on the forest.

They come two days later, and in force. You can hear them a mile away, their stealth spoiled by the screams they loose seeing their first ghost, their ammo wasted on its incorporeal body. A few more cases of this and the screaming and shooting stop as they obviously catch on to the lack of a threat the ghosts present. That's when you release your control over the haunting. You can hear branches snap and boulders roll as the forest comes alive with possessed fauna and strata. The screaming starts anew.

Vriska looks at you with grudging respect in between checking various rifles and Rose gives you a tight smile and a terse nod. You and Vriska are on opposite sides of the cabin, aiming through what strategic holes Vriska's left in the fortifications for fire lanes. The plan is to cover as much as possible, with Rose rushing between you to reload and cover blind spots as necessary. Since the human is a used to much more... instinctive weapons, she won't bother with much gunplay. She'll be on anti-psychic duty, calling down hell and thunder on the biggest threats. You check your guns as Rose warns you that they are coming. And then Vriska clears her throat.

“So. In case you don't make it out of this, Megido, I just want you to know it's been absolutely fucking horrible having you on board and you're welcome to haunt this place if you kick it.”

“If _I_ don't make it out of this? I'm sorry, who takes the most fire in every goddamn job we pull because she's a showboating, egotistical tramp?”

“Yeah, but you see, Megido,” Vriska drawls laconically, at complete odds with the look she fixes you with. It's all fire and intensity, the blaze of a soul burning brightly on the fuel of life. “Rose and I, the Dark Gods Below know our names. I wonder if they know yours?”

Her pronouncement sets you on edge for a moment but then you dismiss it. You're quite done with phrases scaring the shit out of you. You haul back on the bolt of your rifle and growl, “If they don't, they better start learning. If you two are going to hell, I'm coming with.”

–

In the end, it's a massacre. The first wave died in running in, and the last died running away. Vriska's shots go off like a full fusillade, she fires so quickly. You're less practised, but still people don't make it far. A few unlucky ones did, and then instead of facing a rifle, they'd die to the spray of your shotgun. And when they run, it's you chasing them down, a direram skull for a crown, a frayed and tattered skirt fluttering against pumping legs. Four curling horns, promising them death as they stumbled through the haunted woods.

It would have made you uneasy, hunting them down, shooting them in the back, with ghosts doing the tracking. But one of them shot Rose as she popped the head of a gibbering, lunatic bronzeblood psychic, so you just let the rage fuel your hunt. It's not a bad hit, but you suspect Vriska held that bit back from you to drive you. 

You would be a legend, born a myth anew, if anyone could live to tell of the hunt.

On your way back up the mountain, you call forth all their ghosts, and set them loose in your haunting. The Dark Gods may not know your name, but the dead do. If people weren't wary enough of this place, they would be now. The howls that now lift off the mountain's facings will be heard in town and the story will travel. Only fools would tread here.

–

There are worse things in the world than fools and it is keen to remind you of them.

–

While Rose sleeps in human repose, recovering from her wound, Vriska drags you to your 'coon. Well. Calling it dragging is a bit generous. She grabs your hand and pulls you towards the new room, and you let yourself be pulled up out of the seat, away from Rose's side, out of the old bedroom. Then you stop and pull her back against you, her smaller, lankier frame stumbling against yours. She takes advantage of it though and falls hard against you, dragging your neck down to her level. She locks lips, you lock horns and the two of you nip at tender flesh in the manner of kismeses. You are hollow from the lack of the battle’s adrenaline and the lava she sets to flowing in your veins fills you nicely.

At some point she fairly crawls up your body and you carry her to the recuperacoon, dropping her unceremoniously in. She gives a smirking hiss, a delightfully pointed tongue slipping out of her mouth to lick at the love-wounds you've given her. Then she strikes, and you are reminded how much strength is hidden in that blueblooded body as she hauls you bodily in after her.

“Do you hate me, Megido?” she whispers as she grinds herself between your legs and tightens her fist in your hair. “Do you? Tell me you do. Tell me!”

Her whispers are gasping, desperate things, due in no large part to your teeth in her shoulder, your hands, claws, under her shirt, raking delicious blue streaks across her granite grey flesh. Even as she grinds on your thigh, her bony hips press into you, drawing a surprised gasp from your mouth. She captures it, steal your breath from your lungs like it’s _hers_ and invades your recesses with her tongue. On its way out, you nip it and give a reluctant, hissing,

“Yes!”

The soft, knowing cackle infuriates you, drives your blood to boiling. You want to say more, slip a caveat in there, but you have already made your heart vulnerable as she has made hers.

“Good! Because I loathe you, Megido. I hate your petty, desperate persistence. I hate that someone as weak as you can keep up with me, with Lalonde. I hate that you’ve had the gall to _learn_ from us. I hate that you’ve become so good at killing that I feel like I need to get better at it to _prove_ myself to _you._ ”

“Dark Gods Below, would you just shut up?” you mutter as you tear away at your buttons and rip her shirt open like you’re going for her lifeblood.

“No! Because you hate it, and I want you to feel like I do.” Her grip in you hair tightens and she kisses you roughly. Between the sparks of flame spreading along your scalp and the taste of her on your bruising lips, you want to melt into sensory overload. 

“I hate you so deeply, I can feel it in my bones. Your name, carved over and over on them, _in them_.”

And you freeze for the fire in your veins turning to ice, the molten rock to cold obsidian. She goes from a writhing, whispering goddess in your arms to a bundle of hissing vipers and you cannot drop her fast enough before fleeing the small room.

Through blood pounding through your head with mindless-panic, you can hear her yell, “What? What the fuck did I say?!” but you're clear of the cabin by then, stumbling in the new snow, just bolting clear of a place you'd thought a safe haven. Snow crunches, puffs underfoot and ice scratches at you from low-hanging branches and shrubs, but your near-nudity is a distant concern. You need to get away, need to get away from your murderess.

–

It's Rose that finds you, eventually. You're huddled up under an out-cropping, hunched up before a small fire. She slips around it's edges like a shadow, and for a moment you flinch, steel yourself, but you can't bring yourself to do that to her. Softly, once she knows you know you're there, she steps into the fire light.

“I am sorry.”

You're confused, and it must show because she kneels and begins to explain.

“Vriska told me what she said to you, and I am sorry for ever speaking those words to you.”

“...why?” you whisper. “Why did you have to give me that prophecy?”

She hesitates, then hesitates more. You have never seen Rose Lalonde this indecisive, but here she is, staring into your little fire and gnawing her lip.

“I thought... I was doing you a favour. And yes, I should know better. But when I said those words back then, I did not care. I was being charitable, giving a troll a window into their future that might save them. I would never see her again, never be responsible for the consequences.”

She turns her gaze towards you and in her violet eyes you see the truth, and her sorrow. “Of course, now I am completely caught up in the consequences and it is all my fault.”

You shake your head minutely, only casting more hair in front of your eyes. “I keep telling you, it's not. Not the killing, not this. Vriska is going to be the one to murder me, you just told me about it.”

“I didn- that is not necessa-” Rose curses and heaves a sigh that is more groan than anything else. “Oh love, I have completely fucked up your mind, haven't I?”

When you go to protest, she holds up her hand. “Here, then. I should have said this long ago. A prophecy is only one possible outcome. The outcome that all visible signs point to, granted, but still only one possible outcome. And back then, no one knew that you would become such fierce rivals, such black kismeses. They were not visible signs, do you see?”

Rose is inching closer to you, leaning in, desperate to make you understand. “But... but then why did Vriska say those things? It was almost word for word what you said!”

“She could have been recalling the phrase. I'm sure you've done it before, fitting a turn of phrase to an appropriate moment? Or inappropriate, in this case.”

You manage a weak smile as Rose pulls up next to you and slides an arm around your bare midriff. “That does sound like Vriska.”

“Indeed,” and there's a sparkle of laughter, deep in her throat. It draws your own out of yours, but the laughter turns quickly to sobbing.

“God, I fucked up, just running like that. She probably thinks I'm weak as hell and doesn't want me any-”

“Good lord, no.” Rose holds you tighter, kisses your shoulder and nuzzles at your neck, showering you in affection you need. “She thinks you think she's a repellent murderer now and want nothing more to do with her.”

“Well...”

“Hush. I can hear the conflict in your voice and you would not be sobbing over her if that was all you thought of Vriska Serket.”

“But Gods Below, she can just move on! She could net a new kisme-”

“I will silence this idiotic train of thought right now because you appear to have missed a very basic flaw of our dear Serket. She could not move on, because she could not handle the thought of being cast aside. Her complete lack of self-esteem, which her massive and artifically-inflated ego covers for, has reared it's hideous arachnid head and she is _pining_ for you.”

“R-really?”

“No. She is sulking in a corner complaining about you and endlessly polishing the same shotgun. But any normal person would be pining.”

You bark a laugh. “Ok, ok. I get it.” A deep breath. “But... how do I go back?”

“With me. When you are ready. That's it.”

Rose Lalonde claims not to understand pity or matespritship like a troll would, but you could easily mistake the tenderness and support in her voice for it. But this is Rose Lalonde, and it seems every soft word must have or be followed by a sharp edge.

Her head rests against your shoulder and quietly she speaks the thorn, “But even if she does kill you... must it be murder?”

You stiffen in her arms at that, but slowly relax. There are deviant tales with a certain amount of romance to them where a kismesitude encounters a problem where only the death of one or another will solve it. It's usually a strange mix of passion and necessity, obscene in its climactic finality and you find yourself blushing that you might be the Romin to Vriska's Julet.

“I guess...no. I guess not.”

“Mmn. Well. Think on that some more. And get your arm around me properly, not all of us are built like oxen and I am feeling properly frigid here.”

–

When you return, eventually, Vriska shoots upright like a soldier called to attention. There's a tense moment before she opens her mouth and a miracle spews forth.

“Look, Meg- Aradia. I'm sorry for being a toolbag and talking like that. Just... just don't go, ok?”

You stare in shock at an actually apologetic Serket, before managing, “I'm not going anywhere Vriska, not until I get my fill of you being wrong and me being right.”

“Well fuck you too!”

Laughter. Pure, happy, and just a little bit grudging laughter. It fills the cabin, makes it feel like home again. Makes it feel like you're safe. With a psychotic human and a self-centered bandit. With a human who will reason you through your worst and a bandit who put you before herself for once.

“And I'm sorry for running,” you tell her. “I'll make sure I face up to your stupidity next time.”

“Yeah, you'd better. No more running from me. Now, I think we've got something to finish, eh?”

You blush lightly, and give another laugh, still high from merriment and Rose slinks off to leave the two of you. But on a whim, you catch her hand.

“Hey, where are you going?”

Surprised, she manages, “Why, I am giving you some time to yourselves.”

“Yeah, after saving this little mess and trekking up and down this mountain after me, I think you're well enough to join in.”

Vriska and Rose blink at your casual disregard for the unspoken rule of your trio. Then the familiarly lascivious smile spreads across Vriska's face. “Yeah Lalonde, come on in. The sopor's fine.”

“Ugh. So long as you don't get me as drunk as last time.”

You would wonder at that, but you're following a stripping Serket into your chambers and you have better things to wonder about.

–

You can barely breathe, you are so tired from the night's exertions. As your eyes begin to flutter shut and the blissful, afterglow-laden sleep of the thoroughly satisfied creeps up on you, your horns tingle in a manner you've only felt around Rose at her worst. Your fears are justified when the lightly snoring bundle of humanity in your arms bolts straight awake, scrabbling for needles that aren't there or anywhere near.

Your fears are further justified by a rent in the fabric of the world opening before you and crystalline water leaking through. At this point, Vriska is waking up, snorting like a horse in the morning, just in time to see the inky darkness of this... portal part to allow two figures through. Horns that arch in opposite directions spear through masses of hair that seem to bleed into the dark of the portal. They are nearly identically tall, near or beyond seven feet in height and both wield the ultimate symbol of power in this world.

The Condesce and the Courtess stand before you in your shitty little mountain cabin and the only thing keeping you from fainting is the sheer unreality of the moment.

Then a shark-maw opens and speaks, “Well if this ain't the most remorally offensive shit I've ever sea-n, I don't know what is.”

And the wave of pheromones hits you, commanding you to OBEY and you pass out.

\--

You come to on the bed and the first thing you hear is the rough, briny speech of the Condesce. You tense up. The ruler of the entire planet is in your shitty cabin in the Wastelands. You don’t know what Vriska’s done to deserve this, but you’re certain it’s her fault. And in a way, you’re right. But any further thought is cut off by the lilting, bubbly tone of the other Peixes.

“And of course you’ll be compensated, right Meenah?”

There’s a sound you imagine to be like a whale growling, and a huff, “Yeah yeah. Basically, I’ll take all the fucking money in your account and you can have the next goddamn ship out of the Terminal Island yards.”

“Isn’t that great?! You’re dream will come true, we’ll finally be rid of those clowns and our species will be saved!” The contrast in her tone and voice to the Condesce’s is incredible, and it’s not just age. Feferi Peixes is a troll born for a different age.

“What’s wrong with our species?”

The words have left your mouth before you realize you’re speaking them. Every head, every gaze in the next room snaps towards you, framed in the doorway as you are. The tyrians tower above even you, taking up the middle of the room as there’s literally nowhere else they will fit with their horns. As it is, they scrape the peaked roof. Vriska and Rose stand side-by-side and though Vriska’s eyes are wide and alert, on the verge of bolting, Rose looks vaguely sleepy, her eyes heavily lidded. You find it strange you cannot see her irises. But you have more important things to worry about, like the Condesce stalking towards you.

“And who’s this then?” You flinch in stiff terror as a long claw unfurls and pricks at your midsection. She leans in for a good look at your eyes and likely to intimidate the shit out of you. You very nearly react literally as your vision is filled with the yellow and fuschia of her eyes. “A rustblood? Looks like good stock, shoal looks strong. You’re gonna need strength where you’re goin’.”

She withdraws and a rough tongue licks at the dollop of your blood. Her pupils dilate momentarily and shrink to pin-pricks and something like shock spreads across her face a moment before a wry smirk passes. “Whale, whale. A deadspeaker, eh? Shit, we are living in the end times.”

“You haven’t told her about Peoria?” murmurs The Courtess to your friends.

Vriska snarls, “Yeah, she knows about Peoria, just not about all the other fucking hatcheries. Same as ninety-fucking-nine point nine percent of the public. Now can we get back to business here?”

Her Imperious Condescension spins away from you. “That’s what I like about you, Serket. You treat things with the right sort of mercenary attitude.”

“Yeah, yeah. I accept your terms. But these two get paid too.”

“I. Am. Givin’ you. A ship,” growls out Meenah, in a tone designed to cut the hamstrings of a mortal troll and you twitch as another wave of OBEY hits you. You blink away the dots from your vision as the chemical assault nearly overwhelms you again. Vriska on the other hand, swallows and manages a sneer.

“Yeah, and that’s what I want. What about these two? They’ve got their own dreams and wants.”

Her Imperial Courtesy cocks her head, scraping a line in your roof. “You told me she was a selfish, cold-hearted bitch, Dread Ancestor.”

“Yeah, she _was_ , Dear Descendant.” The Condesce grips her double trident. “Maybe cullin’ one of these two’ll swordfish her out.”

“Reaching a bit there, Peixes?” Snarls Vriska, her hand resting on the butt of her pistol.

“Now now, cuttlefish, there’s no need to get violent. If Meenah doesn’t want to offer anything beyond a ship, I can cover the cost of the pair of you. What do you want out of this, Rose Lalonde?”

There’s a moment where you swear Rose’s eyes dim, and then they flash open. “I want out of a clause in my pact.”

You see both Peixes flinch from the words and you wonder how deep Rose is actually involved with the Dark Gods. Feferi responds slowly, “You know I can’t do that, human.”

“No, but you can argue on my behalf when I renegotiate.”

Bubbling laughter lilts out of the Courtess’ mouth. “And when will that be? When is the next time Rose Lalonde will brave the depths of Earlternia’s eternal abyss-”

She freezes, as if coming to a realization. “Of course. The day you have to.”

“Quite. And I would like an Empress arguing on my behalf before the Noble Circle.”

The Courtess considers this, her lips pursed, a smartly filed fuschia talon tapping at her chin. “Yes, ok. I believe I can do this.

“And you?” she turns to you and despite the difference in their bearing, you feel the same oppressive weight of threats unspoken. “What would you like?”

You manage to shake your head, just a little. A squeak, “Nothing, Your Courtesy.”

“Come now, little burgundyblood, there must be somefin you want.” Hips sway side to side as she approaches, less seductive and more predatory. “Wealth? Status? When you're done, a lot of the old order will no longer stand. It ‘cuda be that there would be a place for you in the new one?”

Your head spins, uncertain of what she’s talking about. You want nothing except for them not to be here.

“Maybe you’d like to know what a deadspeaker is and what your porpoise is, hmm?”

That tugs at you, you cannot deny that, but you realize something. You really don’t ever want to see them again, to feel this primal terror ever again. So you force the words up and out.

“I...if I may… I would like you to… except for Rose’s deal… I would like you to leave our lives. Please. I don’t want to see either of you again.”

Huge fuschia eyes go wide with outrage and Feferi Peixes hisses, “How _dare_ you! I am a _blessing_ to your caste and you shou-”

She’s cut off by the hissing laughter of Meenah Peixes. “Hold your horsefish, Feferi. If her price is never having to see these haemo-rejects and their fuck-human, that’s a price I’ll happily fuckin’ pay. It’s like _I’m_ getting paid! Ahahaha!”

Then all amusement vanishes from her face. “Done deal. Get to it.”

Then she jerks her head at The Courtess, who composes herself, and nods before speaking a black word that cracks the fabric of the world. It is like when Rose speaks Abyssal, only a hundred times worse as it feels like your horns are being ripped from your skull. You nearly black out and you see Vriska double over in pain.

The Empresses of All Earlternia step through the black hole and it vanishes behind them. There is a moment of silence that hangs heavily in the air and it is broken by a string of curses from Vriska, who slumps against the wall and slides down it. They only stop when she’s sitting with her hands in her hair. Rose absently pats her head and stares at the emptiness where before there was a hole. 

“What the fuck did we just get into?” you ask.

\--

“...so without a Matriorb, this is the last generation of trolls on the face of this planet, unless we can get those genochambers from the subjugglators.”

“Dark Gods Below.” It’s the only thing you can say, facing the prospect of the death of your entire species. The breath leaves your lungs slowly, unwillingly leaning back on the bench. The three of you retired outside for fresh air and the bracing cold after your imperial visit. Now Vriska is explaining the mess the lot of you are in to you, pacing in the snow. Rose’s small hand entwines itself in yours and she gives you a squeeze in heartfelt support.

“But how did the subjugglators get their hands on Old Empire genochambers?”

“Got ‘em off some human they pasted. Bigwig in the Great War, led a bit of a resistance.” Vriska shrugs, indicating that probably that was all the Empresses had told her. 

“But how did _he_ get them? I thought the Condescension had a monopoly on all Old Empire technology?”

Rose speaks up, her voice thick with bitterness.

“There was a human who loved adventure too much and a man with sharp, shaded lenses even more. He stole them from the Condesce, and gave them to his shaded love, unaware of that one’s hubris.”

You and Vriska look at Rose in surprise, expecting more, but no more comes. Her mouth is a thin, pale line in the winter’s chill and she won’t look either of you in the eyes. You are coming to understand that there is much you have left to learn of your partners, and they of each other, still. 

“Well, anyways. The Condesce and Courtess want that shit stolen, all or as many of the clowns killed and all of it made to look like it wasn’t their idea.”

“Truly, they chose well in selecting the most criminally insane gang in the Wastes.”

“Ha! Damn straight. Right, ladies, let’s plan how we’re going to rob Fort Knocks.”

\--

Your final plan bears all the marks of a standard Vriska Serket robbery. Explosions, violence, making-most-of-it-up-on-the-fly, and a complete disregard for the safety of anyone involved. After her more subtle plans proved too complicated or unfeasible (“Poisoning a violetblood? Have you _seen_ what they drink?”) Rose lapsed into a sullen silence which quickly turned into a typical snarkfest as she picked apart and thereby refined the plans of Vriska and yourself.

Your contributions to the plan are mostly ones of reconnaissance, trying to offset the near-suicidal danger of assaulting a stronghold of the subjugglators. Which is how you managed to talk yourself into volunteering to be a labourer under the violet gazes of the psychopathic religious zealots that serve as the meaty right fist of Her Imperious Condescension.

\--

Your bloodcaste gives you a certain amount of anonymity to the drugged-up, half-mad clown imperial police. And reserves for you a certain amount of casual abuse from the same and many of the other labourers. So long as you are carrying something, working somewhere or otherwise busied, they ignore you, save for an offhand whack from a club. But everyone seems to get those, even other subjugglators. 

The worst of the abuse actually comes from other trolls working in the complex. From the moment you walked in with forged papers clearing you for menial labour and servitude, your so-called betters on the haemospectrum were spitting on you, figuratively and literally. The bronzebloods in your labour unit were quick to assert their experience and seniority, shoving you out of line so they could get to the food first, catcalling in the ablutionblocks and generally acting as cruelly as the haemospectrum allowed them to.

While outside the walls of Fort Knocks, the haemospectrum was alive and well, it had adapted to the more individual, freer ideas of the humans with whom your species had been forced into co-existence. In these dark, incensed halls however, the presence and influence of the subjugglators seems to have enforced older, crueller modes of behaviour. You wonder at the difference the birth and ascension of the Courtess wrought.

Your quarters are nothing of the sort. Rustbloods get the worst of the worst, which is a set of tents outside, with a thin bedroll. You are thankful of months of hunting for Vriska and Rose as the old habits of sleeping on hard ground come back easily enough. You make do without sopor, your curious blessing allowing you to trade the paste with other rustbloods for rumours and other intel.

Around the fires you’re forced to make yourselves, you spit caught skitterslithers and arachtaurs with the others in camp. You always toss the bones into the fire and in this way send messengers back to your partners in crime. Information like watch rotations, entry points, shipment schedules, anything relating to the fort goes into the tiny ethereal minds of your ghostly servitors. Tiny, invisible lines stretch out from you, out into the darkness of the world, reaching out to your matesprit who will extract the information from the tiny souls. Keeping the skulls though, turns out to be a mistake.

You’re shoving an immense container against a wall in the warehouse, trying to piece together the layout of the place when a backhand takes out your coworker and you’re spun around. Lifting you clear off the ground is a thickset troll half again your size. 

“Creeping crawling creepy little heretic, someone’s been tellin’ TALES about you,” rumbles a basso voice. The subjugglator has you by the neck, slowly strangling you at arms length. “Seems like your low-born motherfuckin’ ASS has been gettin’ up to some strange business at the campfires. Now, a FINE labourious SISTER like you with your papers in all fucking proper order and shit ain’t up to nothin’ she ain’t supposed to, is she?”

The vise around your neck tightens and manic glee dances in the troll’s dead eyes. A real smile, no, a demented grin cracks the painting of a dead one on his face, and you think, _Well, here it is. Here’s where I die._ and you’re strangely thankful it’s not at Vriska’s hands. You manage to shake your head in a negatory all the same.

“Really? But some motherfucking skulls we found all up in your little tent say different, wicked sister? That’s the stink of necromancy, that shit is. Straight up FORBIDDEN psychery. And you know what, twisted sister? You got that stink all over you.”

His nostrils flare grotesquely in the paint of his mask and he takes a few theatrical sniffs in your direction. 

“Now, how’s a troll with psychics avoided the cull, the draft and done got into our HOLY PLACE? Eh? EH?” He shakes you hard enough to bang your head off the metal container at your back and you begin to black out.

“Naw, naw, nawnawnaw! Don’t go away little motherfucking PUPPET, we’ve still got QUESTIONS FOR YOUR MOTHERFUCKING HERETICAL ASS!” His roaring is the last thing you hear.

\--

The next several days are an introduction to hospitality of the subjugglators. And by hospitality you mean torture, interrogation and more torture. Pains you could never have imagined are visited on your body, even as their chucklevoodoos try to pull the truth of your purpose here from your mind. You resist their clumsy intrusions, they don’t succeed, and that drives them to further insanities. 

You lose track of the time almost instantaneously, between the pain and the drug cocktail they fill you with regularly. They cackle over the drugs, taunting you that you won’t be able to use your “motherfucking heretical witchcraft” to break lose. They are full of shit. You can feel your powers, hazy and impotent as they are in this situation, but you have not lost access to them. You would think that with all their experience, they would have more effective drugs, but maybe the problem is with you and your late-blooming powers.

Some indeterminate amount of time later, you’re thrown in your cell after a long day’s hospitality session. You think they’re giving up, asking fewer questions. But their enthusiasm for making you scream is still strong, so you do not think life will be improving without your input. As you lie there, taking the cold floor as a balm from the searing pains, your gaze suddenly catches a hold of the first bit of agency you have in this situation.

Your fist flails out clumsily, but since the filthbug was too busy eating the remains of your gruel, you catch it unaware and crush it. Then it’s little effort to call up the snap-freeze of a bit of power and send off the tiny ghost with a single word for a message.

_Help._

\--

It arrives with all the subtlety of your original plan. The clown cultist lets go of your hair as the building shakes with a massive explosion. Through the floors the dull roar of the fireball reaches this closed cell and the subjugglators scramble for the door. The one in charge of your interrogation points at a smaller one.

“You! Don’t you motherfucking let this one OUT OF YOUR SIGHT, get me?”

“Crystal, Your Hilarity!”

You don’t bother meeting his eyes, though you can feel the raging heat of his hatred boring at you. While it’s not the plan you all had initially, the sound of continual explosions must mean that whatever rescue or assault Vriska and Rose have launched must be working fairly well, or at least continuing apace. It’s not like they could take the Fort of Hard Knock Knock Jokes without some serious firepower. But even as you think this, the sound and number of the explosions begins to diminish and your head comes up.

The junior subjugglator grins at you. “You ain’t getting out of here that easy, heretic.”

“My kismesis doesn’t give up that easy, clown.”

As if to punctuate your declaration, the sound of gunfire reaches the cell and the clown growls and advances on you, drawing back for a punch. It cracks down, not nearly as hard as the blows you’ve gotten used to, but still hard enough to ring your head. 

“Didn’t give you permission to MOTHERFUCKING SPEAK!”

“Dark Gods Below, is it some fucking religious law that you lunatics have to talk like that?”

“Don’t you be SPEWING your HERETICAL SHIT about your IMAGINARY FUCKING GODS in this HOLY PLACE of the messiahs, sister!”

You can’t help it, you have to laugh. As he hauls back for another blow, you snap at him,

“We’ll see whose religion is imaginary in a second, scabface!”

“What the MOTHERFUCK-” he says, cracking another blow down, “is THAT supposed to mean?”

“It means you’re a fucking dumbass and haven’t been listening.”

The gunfire had been getting louder, drawing nearer, but it isn’t a bullet that sets you free, but a bolt of eye-searing magic. It blows the door down, slamming it into the violetblood, crushing him into the wall beside you. He twitched, moving jerkily to try and move the door off himself, you slam your manacled arm to the side in a backhand that pulps his head to the wall. _Don’t get into a prisoners reach without backup_ was one of the first things they taught you in the medicalacerators all those years ago.

You look at your saviour, your matesprit and the soldiers surrounding her. Before you can ask anything, she holds up a hand for silence. Sure that she has it, she says,

“Knock knock.”

\--

Laughter is the best medicine they say, but you could really do with more than the few bandages and ointments Rose was able to bring to the table. Instead you busy yourself with reloading your shotgun, glad for the holsters and change of clothes Rose thoughtfully brought you. The humans and you jog through the hallways as you fill Rose in on the last bits of intel that you never got a chance to relay.

“...and the more I think about it, the more I think they’re in those crates in the warehouse. There’s nowhere else to hide anything that big.”

“You heard the troll, soldiers! Retrieval and transportation of those genochambers is your primary goal, the continued murder of the subjugglators your secondary and the thorough looting and despoilment of this fort your tertiary.”

“Yes ma’am, Ms. Strider ma’am!”

The soldiers take the first set of stairs they find and you shoot a glance at Rose.

“Ms. Strider?”

“I would thank you not to ask questions the answers to which you may not be appreciative of,” Rose answer tersely. A quick look over her shoulder and then she’s pressed you up against a wall and stealing a kiss. “Thank you for staying alive.”

“Eheh, you’re welcome. That _was_ my primary goal.”

She gives you a small, impish smile and leads you further down the hall. 

“Suffice to say that the rebels believe that they are engaged in a raid to avenge the honour of their long-dead leader and bolster their funds. They will leave the genochamber to me, as I have promised to find someone capable of using it properly.”

“You wonderful liar, you.” 

“For shame, Aradia! I spoke not a single falsehood.”

You would smack her, but for the maddened clown that tears around the corner, charging the pair of you. You fire one barrel into his knees to slow him down and then the other into his lunatic, leering mockery of a face. Slamming new shells into the barrels, you ask Rose,

“So where’s Vriska?”

“Last I saw, she was leading the looting contingent, which should put her somewhere in the vaults.”

“Alright, where’s that? Let’s grab her and vamoose.”

Further replies from Rose are cut off by the stairwell door ahead of you crashing open and Vriska Serket rolling through with it. An unnatural roar follows her, setting the dust and debris surrounding her trembling. Unsteadily she gets to her feet and catches sight of you. She waves at the pair of you and starts heading your way.

“RUN!” she screams and picks up speed. Through the ruined stairwell door hunches… something. Something terrible. A part of you recognizes it as the largest troll you’ve ever seen, but a psychic miasma fills your head and the shotgun shakes in your hand. You raise it slowly, shakily. By the time that Vriska tears past you grabbing at both yours and Rose’s collars, you realize you weren’t aiming at the subjugglator, but at _her_.

The further you get from it, the clearer your head seems to get, so you get Vriska’s point and pick up your pace. Rose stumbles, casting a look over her shoulder, her face expressing the most fear you’ve ever seen her show. A raised needle, a bolt of eye-searing white, and what should have been a clean hit… but the bolt carves itself apart and goes wide less than a foot from the beast of a troll.

“What the fuck is that thing?” you yell.

“Grand Highblood!” Vriska yells back. “I guess he’s why the C- why they were so sure this raid would cripple the fucking clowns!”

“You mean we have to _fight_ that?!”

“Not fairly, if I can bloody well help it! Get to the courtyard, get to the rebels, have them fill the fucker with lead from thirty paces!”  
Paler than you’ve ever seen her, Rose nods in agreement, “This course of action has my heartiest approval.”

You reach the stairwell you left the soldiers at and the door slams promptly shut. Vriska tries to yank it open or slam it open, but it doesn’t budge.

“Oh for fuck’s sake!”

“He’s gaining! Keep running!”

Ahead of you, further doors slam shut as you flee and all you can hear behind you is the deep, bowel-shaking laughter of the maddest clown of all. Escape route after escape route are shut to you and holster your shotgun to reload the others. It looks like this will come down to a fight after all. The end of the hallway looms closer, closer and-

“Do try to remember to tuck and roll!” yells Rose from behind you. You look back in confusion but a blast of white hate screams past you and demolishes the wall. You leap through the hole along with Vriska and-

You’re tumbling through open air, Rose having blow a hole in the side of the building. It’s four storeys straight down and as you turn head over heels, your blood runs cold because while you’re confident you and Vriska can survive this, you’re not sure if Rose can. Then the wind is driven out of your lungs by the hard ground and you’re rolling, rolling, rolling crashing to a halt with a wrecked barrel.

You haul yourself up and look around desperately for Rose. You can’t see her on the ground and look up. With a heaving sigh of relief, you see her descending, needles to either side, somehow holding herself aloft. Then the Grand Highblood crashes through the hole you made and slams down on top of Rose. They strike the ground with an earth-shattering crunch.

\--

It feels as if the entire fort has gone silent. A pool of red and black spreads out from under the violetblood’s feet and he looks down in amusement, the horrific chuckle leaking from his twisted mouth once. He thought humans bled red, but black is a nice colour too. He never gets to paint with it. His voodoo tries to insinuate itself into minds across the courtyard, human and troll alike, and it finds its ill purchase easily. Except in two.

There arises before him a keening shriek that splits the silence, a wailing cry that sets his teeth on edge and conjurs uncertainties he has never felt before. He moves to crush the rustblood so offending him. Then that shriek is joined by another, hoarser scream and pistols roar. Something stabs into his mind as the bullets impact ineffectually into his hide, like the tiniest needles. Die, it says. Die, she screams. Die. DIE. _DIE._ _**DIE.**_ The stabbing mounts until it is like a dagger being driven into his mind and he is confused at the sensation. He has been made inviolate by the grace of the Mirthful Messiahs. But this blueblood with the bleeding eyepatch is getting through.

She draws steel and charges him like a fool the same moment the keening wail stops and the temperature of the fort plummets. 

He swats the blueblood’s attempts at swordplay and holds his head in pain, painted visage screwing up at the effort.

Something is going horribly, horribly wrong.

\--

They respond to your summons. Every dreaming dead soul, torn back to their bodies and then apart from them. The dead advance on the Grand Highblood in the shutter-shuffling gait of those who have been asleep a moment, an eternity. So strong was your call that they flicker visible and send humans and trolls running. A troll sees his slain moirail, and goes to touch him, only to pass through. He goes to his knees, weeping and doesn’t rise. A ghost passes through a soldier and the human shivers, vomits and faints.

The violetblood sees them coming and snarls, focusing on you. He knows you are responsible. Oily tendrils of fear slick at your mind but are repulsed by the crystalline-cold core of rage that makes up your consciousness now. He doesn’t understand, and that means you have to die. But that means he has to get past Vriska first.

She screaming the same word over and over again, blood flowing freely from beneath her eyepatch, ice-blue tears from the other.

“DIE!” she commands, over and over. She slashes at him and he blocks with terrifying speed and ease. For all her skill with murder tools, Vriska’s crippled mind is doing more damage. The monstrous troll smashes down with his club, crushing it into the space Vriska occupied a moment before. She’s rolling through his legs and slices a line across his hamstrings. The steel barely breaks flesh.

But she’s bought enough time for your ghosts to arrive. You focus the cold rage into them, willing them to do as you command. Even as the first few dissipate against whatever protection this filthy highblood has, a translucent hand takes hold of him, becoming solid for long enough to restrict his movement. Another and then another hand fall upon him, holding him down. Vriska flies into a furious dance of slashing cuts and though she can barely harm him, he cannot move fast enough to stop her. 

She becomes a perfect storm of death, dodging his restricted strikes and bleeding him dry. The ground all about them is stained violet as arcs of the monster’s thick ichor splatter across. And over the sound of meat being butchered, the same screaming,

“DIE!”

The beast responds with a roar of his own, trying to shake of hands that aren’t there. More and more of your ghosts are flickering out of existence, their threaded ties to you cut by the highblood’s psychic defenses. He regains some of his mobility, but is hampered further by the mess Vriska has made of him. But he is still fast enough to block her once. It’s enough. 

He turns the block into a grab and headbutts her with a _crack_ that resonates through the courtyard and she stumbles back, face a ruin. Her blood trickles down his face, mingling with his as his blood mingled with Rose’s on the gro-

Wait. Where’s Rose?

The answer comes in the feeling of nails on your horns, digging into the base. All trolls clutch at their heads and look up as a word in Abyssal is spoken forth and slams into the Grand Highblood, driving him to his knees and eradicating your ghosts.

Floating two stories above the courtyard is the form of a frail little human. Your cry of relief quickly turns to one of pain, however. Her neck lolls at an impossible angle and a leg is disjointed. Blood, red and black, run freely from beneath her dress. The head lolls back, eyes rolling to pure, aching white, and she speaks.

_perverse, perverting creature, coward, cretin_  
 _your kind’s willful, willing, witless distortion of our children ends_  
 _the greed, spite, fear, that has driven, disturbed, demented you will be severed_  
 _you cannot, will not, stop the salvation of our Earlternia_  
 _you have crushed the wrong pawn, vessel, daughter_  
 _we know her name, her soul, her desires and they are in accordance with ours_  
 _you die now and your church burns_

And from the barrel-chest of the subjugglator comes grinding, growling laughter. “Motherfucking WHAT? What’s a fucking demon-possessed WITCH of a WORTHLESS MONKEY gonna do to the house of the MIRTHFUL MOTHERFUCKING MESSIA-”

_there are no messiahs, saviours, bright paradisiacal afterlives_  
 _there is only the Horrorterrors, us, the Noble Circle, the dark_  
 _you are born from the dark, dreaming and waking you will return to us_

“Shut your FUCKING WHORE MOUTH you stank-ass blabbering CORPSE! I ain’t gonna stand for ANY MORE OF YOUR SICK MOTHERFUCKING HERESIES.”

_no, you won’t_

That last phrase, for all its aching timbre, contains the dry, sardonic humour of a pale human woman. Your worlds go black for an instant, and in that moment there is a screaming like the death of an empire. When it ends, Rose falls bonelessly to the ground and the Highblood is but a smear.

Both you and Vriska rush for her, rush to her body. Side by side you skid to a halt beside her, on your knees like supplicants.

“Oh Gods Below, Rose, be alright, please.”

“Come on, Lalonde, quit scaring us!”

You clutch at her hand while Vriska goes for her pulse. Swearing, she leans over and tries to administer breath. The head rolls about sickly in Vriska's hands and you break into hiccuping sobs, the sight of it turning your stomach and paining you to your empty core. You squeeze Rose’s hand as Vriska tries to revive her, the both of you crying. Your garnet tears make a mess of Rose’s sleeve and Vriska’s run freely down her face and Rose’s cheeks.

Eventually she stops. Hunched over Rose, crying, Vriska stops. She weeps openly, sobbing thickly, and you don’t care. You can’t muster any thought, any contempt for her, because Rose is gone and as much as you will probably need each other in the coming days, you just can’t bring yourself to care right now. Rose is gone. You begin to shake and curl up into yourself. You hold Rose’s hand as if it’s the only thing keeping you together.

“Bring her back.”

Vriska is staring at you wide-eyed, wild-eyed, desperate. There is a madness to her that is contagious, because you understand what she means. 

“Bring her back, Megido.”

You nod quickly and move her out of the way. Not a single part of you quails at the monstrosity of what you are about to do as the entirety of the Fort of Hard Knock Knock Jokes begins to crust over with a thin film of ice.


	5. Epilogue

**4170 SI**   
**1907 CE**

Your name is Rose Megido-Serket, née Lalonde, born Rosalonde Strider. You were here for the beginning of this, and you are here for the end.

The chill wind of winter cuts through the San Francisco bay; it smells of salt, tears, and long goodbyes. But perhaps that is an over exaggeration of pathetic fallacy, brought on by your emotional investment in this moment. Certainly, the room you are in reeks of sorrow.

The bed on which you are half-sat is a massive, comfortable one, suitable for someone whose age has overtaken them. It is particularly luxurious for a troll, assuming they could by some machination do away with the nightmares that afflict their kind. The four posts are hung with grey and garnet fabric and festooned with skulls and bonerattles of all sizes. You are quite proud of the effect; interior decorating was never something you had much passion for. It is a proper locale for the last days of Aradia Megido.

Another gust blows through the window, buffered by the lean, sharp form of your first lover. Vriska Serket’s hands are jammed into her longcoats pockets and though she tries to hide it, you can see the movement of her hands clenching and unclenching. She has long said her goodbyes, curt things, but still full of passion, regret and hate. She half-turns as if to say something, then thinks better of it. The indecision of the moment draws a sad smile from your cold, rigid face.

Idly, you brush a strand of grey hair from Aradia’s face. So much as a hundred years ago, Aradia would be a shocking rarity: a troll grown old. It feels wrong somehow, that a species whose most celebrated members can live forever also spawns lives doomed to end before yours. Her cracked and wizened face seems more apropos for a human shaman than a troll psychic. Her face no longer betrays the pain that has afflicted her for weeks. A still thing, it grants her an aura of peace and contentment, even sans her usual bright smile. Her soul, too, has gone still. It has been hours since you have been able to link to her psychically. And yet, you held back from telling Vriska.

Finally, she manages to turn. Her face is now weathered by dozen of sweeps on the ocean and all the more scarred for it, but still youthful, appearing a fraction of her quadrants’ ages. The curse of the highblood, that they outlive those they come to love. Sailing the last tallship in the world has not weathered her soul though, and it burns brightly yet with all the hunger for life and companionship that has ever characterized her. 

“Can’t she… you know, do what she with y-” Vriska bites her lip, sharp fangs nearly drawing blood, indecision writ anew across her face. “Can’t she… stay?”

“I am certain that is all she would wish for, if she could. But it is not to be, love.” your voice does not crack, does not croak, and you are glad for it. “Her soul… she waits, Vriska.”

Your reserve, the lack of verbosity, as uncommon as it is, suits the occasion, you think. Vriska looks at you, hair wild and eye wide in nigh-on panic as a mad giggle wriggles its way free of her throat.

“So in the end, it comes true after all!” The giggle cracks in sudden, barking laughter which in turn ends in a sob. You rise from the bedside and draw her into an embrace, one arm about her hip, the other reaching up and around to pat, pap and stroke at her hair. You can feel the tension in her steel-corded limbs, feel her jaw work against the top of your head as she swallows another sob and fights back the tears.

“I am sorr-”

“Fuck! You and her, at the same time! This isn’t fair, Rose! No one should have to fucking lose everything at once.”

“Come now, you are not losing everything. You will still have the _Scrimshaw_ and the open ocean. You will have centuries to find a new life, new quadrant-mates-”

“I don’t fucking want new quadrants, I want you guys!” The stamp of her foot is acutely juvenile and all the more endearing for it. She grips you close, holds you desperately. 

“I am not telling you to forget us, Vriska. Mourn as long as you please, but do not linger, do not regret.”

You turn your face up at her, and with a firm hand force her to look at you. “Though I still look young, love, I’ve lived a life longer than most humans and filled with such living that there are scant room for regrets. Honour us, and do the same.”

And you kiss her lightly. Chapped, sea-scoured lips meet grave-dry ones and the moment is enough to pain your quietened heart. 

“And remember, dear love, we are all born from darkness. And to darkness we will return. Every one of us. Even you.”

She’s quiet, hands coming up to your hips and resting there lightly. “Yeah.” 

A hard swallow. “I’ll see you again, yeah, in the dark?”

“Oh Vriska, I will be a being of such tenebrous luminance that your soul will quake for my-”

She shuts you up with another brush of lips, and a cupped palm papped to your cheek. Gentle, but effective. Even Vriska Serket can learn to change, in some ways at least. Then she releases you and slips past to the bedside. She picks up the pillow laid out for her and whispers something, a quiet benediction, a prayer you daren’t eavesdrop on. And then she lays the pillow over Aradia’s face and holds. The sounds of the room hush until all that is left is the fading whisper of Aradia’s breath.

Slow eternities later, you tell Vriska, “Her soul has passed on, with ease.”

Vriska blinks, once, twice to clear the tears, then nods and puts the pillow aside. She turns to you and does not look surprised when you begin to leak black mist, like your soul visibly leaving your body. Skin begins to flake, turning to dust as your corporeal form gives in to vengeful entropy. Your soul is already escaping. The ties that rebound it to to the bones of this earthly body are unravelling, the words, promises, _love_ carved into your bones fading.

“You do not have to linger for this.”

The blueblood hesitates and looks like she’s going to say something. But you have said your goodbyes, in words and ways over the past several days. Aradia’s was the hard goodbye, the silent, unheard one. The pair of you know you love each other. There's naught left to say. So she gathers up her bag and hat and goes for the door. It swings open, and she looks back at you. You steel yourself for a goodbye made more difficult, but she’s put on her brave face. 

“See you on the other side, Lalonde. Give Aradia my spite.”

You smile, warmly, and the unaccustomed movement cracks and shatters your skin further. 

“I shall,” you lie. You have no idea if you’ll ever see either of them again. And then Vriska’s slipped through the door. You hear her stamp down the stairs and the door to the outside slam eventually. You move to the window to watch the lean, hunched figure stalk through the street, ignoring the automobile about to hit her. As the chugging vehicle screeches to an eventual halt, she jams a tri-corner, a hat so long out of fashion it is nearly comical, on her head and flips the driver the bird.

You give a last cupid-bow smile and tell the wind, “Keep her well, wherever she may go.”

Then you breathe out the wisps of your soul stuff and settle your disintegrating form beside the bed again. The world is becoming dark and deep, thrumming voices are calling to you. You fix your gaze on Aradia and her peaceful face and keep it in view as long as possible, even as darkling motes of your dispersing form float in the sea breeze. You steel yourself, secure that you lived well and went out with those you loved. Now, you have a meeting to attend, a price to pay and a Courtess to see about a favour long owed.


End file.
